A Dish Best Served Cold
by May Glenn
Summary: Fourth in the "Friday Knights" series, AU from Season 3 finale. Arthur begins to collect a very deadly variety of lawn ornament.Can Merlin, Gwaine, and Leon put a stop to this revenge of the forest before Arthur ends up on the gnomes' dinner menu? And what has Galehaut so hot and bothered, anyway?
1. Chapter 1

_**Summary: **__Arthur's cousin Kilhwch comes to Camelot and is presently knighted. This is a problem since the new "Sir K" is a bully, a liar, and secretly courting Lady Morgana on the side. At the same time, Arthur begins to collect a very deadly variety of lawn ornament. Can Merlin, Gwaine, and Leon put a stop to this revenge of the forest before Arthur ends up on the gnomes' dinner menu? And what has Sir Galehaut so hot and bothered, anyway?_

_**A/N:**__ If this is your first time here, welcome to the __**"Friday Knights,"**__ a spin-off series which jumps off from the end of Season Three of Merlin. We are all huge fans of the show, and this story comes out of a play-by-post roleplaying game I am in with a few friends. This is the fourth installment, so you may want to stop, back up, and read Episodes 1-3, "The Odd Couple," "The Beginning of a Beautiful Friendship," (both posted by me) and "The Unquiet Castle," (posted by B.A. Murdock), but you don't have to._

_If you've been here before, thanks for your patience with me and with this series! We're in the middle of this episode now, so updates will probably be slow but steady. There should be some good times ahead, though: hope you enjoy!_

_**Acknowledgements:**__ Thanks of course to my co-writers, B.A. Murdock and Caitydid. Also thanks to our beta-readers, EffervescentAardvark and Chocolate Honey Apples!_

_**Warnings:**__ Sexual content, violence and language are slightly amped up from what we expect from _Merlin_. I blame Gwaine. _

…

THE FRIDAY KNIGHTS:

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

…

Tables groaned with the weight of food, drink, and decoration that, under Galehaut's watchful eye, had become rather more ornate than Gwaine's original plan of daisy-in-a-pint-glass. Despite a misbehaving castle, errant round table, and the ineptitude of more than a few knights and a wizard at grasping the concept of "event planning," the feast was going off without a hitch. It might have helped that Leon and Galehaut had both stepped in to mostly take control in the flurry of activity that was Arthur and Gwen coming back from their honeymoon. Arthur had certainly been of little assistance, since he'd been running around checking that everything was as he left it, although that was a surprisingly easy task. Gwaine and Leon had done a good job running the castle while he'd been off honeymooning, and there wasn't much to fix. But he found better things to do than help organize the feast anyway.

So far, the feast was going off without a single hitch. It was going so well that Merlin was just waiting for something unexpected to happen. At any minute, he was sure, someone would just have to come running in to cause absolute uproar with the announcement that a troll had broke in and was running amok in the armory. But nothing happened. Everyone ate, and drank, and made merry. Then Arthur stood up to make a speech, and everyone hushed and turned to look at him. Even Gwaine stopped chattering at Percival and turned to listen.

Merlin stifled a yawn and stared across the hall. To the side and behind Arthur's seat stood a short table with two weapons. Well, three, really, but two of them were a pair and so Merlin was counting them as one weapon. The crossbow, clearly a master's work, was for Leon. The pair of short swords, again clearly crafted by a master, was for Gwaine. Arthur couldn't just simply say 'Thank you' and hand them over, though. No, first he had to prose on at length about this, that, and the other thing. Not even half listening, Merlin heard a couple of 'bequeath's, a 'portend', some 'wherefor's, and a lot of other really formal words that Arthur only used when giving extensive speeches. Since he was clearly going to be talking for at least the next ten minutes, Merlin didn't need to pay attention.

"…Merlin!" someone hissed, and he refocused, looking over at Arthur, who was glaring at him with the air of someone who has said his manservant's name at least three times without being heard.

"Sorry, what?" he asked, while everyone stared.

"The _crossbow_, weren't you paying any attention?" Arthur hissed under his breath, pretending to smile for the benefit of everyone else who couldn't hear him getting annoyed with Merlin.

"Of course I was," Merlin said, a little too innocently. The only response he got from Arthur was a roll of the eyes. As if the minor delay had been intended, Merlin picked up the crossbow, which he took first to Leon, who grinned and immediately started investigating it like a child with a new toy. Then he went back for the short swords, and took these down the table to Gwaine.

"He's going to have you polishing his armor for the next twenty years," Gwaine muttered as he took the swords.

"He said thirty, actually," Merlin responded and returned to stand around looking responsible. But Arthur wasn't done talking.

"And for accompanying the Queen and I on our honeymoon, as well as defending the camp against a truly giant elk beast that no doubt would have laid waste to everything were it not for his quick thinking, I bestow upon Merlin this," and here Arthur pulled something out from under the table, "Golden mop." To the laughter of all, he handed Merlin a very tacky, very gold-painted mop. Merlin, who told himself he'd known Arthur too long to not expect this, took it with a graciousness that was far too thorough to be serious or sincere. The king clapped him on the shoulder, still laughing at his own joke, and took something that Gwen, who was trying to mask a laugh behind a polite cough, handed him.

"You didn't think I was serious, did you, Merlin? Honestly, where is your sense of humor?" Arthur asked as he ceased laughing, and handed over a knife, simply decorated, in a tooled scabbard on a sturdy belt. Merlin stared at it in confusion. "Go on, take it," Arthur said, and set it in Merlin's open hand.

"Er… thank you, Sire," he responded, quite serious this time. Then Arthur clapped him on the shoulder again and grinned suddenly.

"Gwen said it should be a sword, but we can't have you taking out half the army on accident," he joked, completely spoiling the seriousness of the moment, and then turned and sat back down. On his other side, Gwen caught Merlin's glance and looked briefly at the ceiling in amusement, then smiled as he stepped back from the table to look at the knife.

"A double-action repeating crossbow with composite lath, a recovery spanning lever and ivory stock! How did you know?"

Ignoring the sound of Gwaine's palm hitting his face in exasperation, Leon hugged the new crossbow to his chest, and gave Merlin a hug too.

"Don't mention it," Merlin said, "I know you've had your sights set on a new one."

Leon laughed and started fiddling about with the mechanisms. It didn't take long at all to get used to the lever—one pull and he'd done what usually took him at least ten times longer before.

"Looks like you got short-changed, Leon!" Gwaine said, his new swords gleaming in his hands. But he was apparently dissatisfied that there were no mechanisms or gadgets associated with them like Leon had with his crossbow, and, feeling he needed to be doing _something_with them, took the opportunity to slice an apple in half with a hearty "Kah-cha!"

"Stand and deliver!" Leon said with mock seriousness, and while Gwaine took a few fake swings at him with the swords Leon fired off a few nonexistent rounds of crossbow bolts at him, both of them adding their own realistic sound-effects.

"Pshoo! Pshoo!"

"Ha! Shing! Gotcha!"

"Gwaine, that's enough!" said Arthur, to whom playing mock-war was a bit much, even at a feast. Leon quelled his giggles and lowered his crossbow obediently as Gwaine sheathed his swords.

"Why does he always yell at me?" Gwaine said petulantly.

"Well, it's always you acting out, isn't it?"

Gwaine sighed. "At least I'm building a reputation." He suddenly smacked Leon in the chest with the back of his hand. "'Ey, is it time to—you know—"

"Everyone else is ready," Merlin said in a low whisper.

"Let's get to it then!"

They had the plan for what the Friday Knights were going to play weeks ago, and so the start of the program was business as usual. Gwaine opened up the evening with "Hello, I Love You" (a particularly fitting song for Gwaine, considering his developed preference for anything with two legs he met at the tavern). Leon sang a more rural song while he beat a fast rhythm on his lute, but during the fast verses of "_I've just seen a face I can't forget the time or place where we just met_" and so on he tended to speed up—seeing Elaine in the audience made him almost unbearably nervous. Thankfully Lancelot and Galehaut, who had recently become the Friday Knight's dynamic vocal duo, chimed in helpfully on the chorus and he managed to just get through it without his fingers falling off from the speed of it. The rest of the set went on all right, with Merlin helping to move instruments and directing backup musicians in the background. He stubbornly refused to help do anything more than the occasional cowbell for Galehaut when he sang, "I'm Burning for You."

Except for the last song, which was the reason for the Friday Knights' secrecy.

As they got ready for this last song, Leon's mind flashed back to a few days ago, when the final program was being finalized. "I don't know if ending with Percival's song really has the right ring," he said. "I think we need something a bit more personal—to show Arthur our loyalty."

Leon couldn't forget the grin that spread over Merlin's face. "Oh—I've got something you can sing!"

"What?" Gwaine asked.

"That song that I always hum. I can't think of the name, but you should see his face whenever I start to hum it accidentally, it's priceless!"

"What, _that _song?" Leon laughed. "Come on, Merlin, that song's for sweethearts!"

"It _is _about loyalty. And everyone knows it. Actually, I wouldn't mind singing it myself…"

Well, with an offer like that, how could they refuse? The thought of seeing Arthur blush to his ear-tips with such a serenade was too much for any of them to pass up.

"Everyone ready?" Leon said, snapping back to the present as Merlin looked up and down the line of the Friday Knights. None of them played instruments on this song, playing back-up singers instead. They even choreographed a few moves, just to see the look on Arthur's face.

The instruments came in, and as they did Merlin started to do his own dance moves. Merlin wouldn't be winning any dance competitions any time soon, but his ridiculous moves seemed to fit the song perfectly. a few members of the audience gave whoops of approval at this severely dated, but catchy, classic tune.

_"We're no strangers to love,  
You know the rules and so do I  
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of,  
You wouldn't get this from any other guy…!"_

Arthur, who usually couldn't be bothered with his Knights' musical inclinations and had been staring out the window in boredom, sat up. "What? What's that—?"  
_  
"I just gotta tell you how I'm feeling, gotta make you understand!"_

Arthur pressed into the back of his chair as if he was being threatened with a sword. "Oh, God, no—"

_"Never gonna give you up!  
Never gonna let you down!  
Never gonna run around and desert you!  
Never gonna make you cry—"_

"SILENCE!" Arthur shouted, and everyone including the musicians went silent just as Percival was belting out "_Never gonna say goodbye_!" before he realized and also shut his mouth.

"What was that?" Arthur demanded.

Merlin grinned. "You know—that song I'm always humming accidentally, and you always get it stuck in your head—"

"Yes, I can see that! Shut up, you lot!" Arthur said, suddenly turning on Leon and the other knights, who quickly tried to cover their laughter with coughs.

Merlin's grin had faded. "Don't you like it?"

"No!"

"Oh. Well, couldn't we just—?"

"NO!"

"Ah. Right."

The Friday Knights dispersed, somewhat more informally than they expected. Arthur was glaring at them, so no one dared give applause, but it was clear that behind her napkin Gwen was laughing her head off.

"What was all that about?" This came from Gaius, who caught Leon, Gwaine and Merlin on their way down from the stage they had been performing on.

"The Princess is just sour, that's all," Gwaine said.

Leon laughed at Gaius's disapproving expression. "Come on, Gaius, a little bit of fun never hurt anyone!"

Gaius raised an eyebrow. "Are you feeling alright, Leon?"

"It's the ale," Merlin said, jabbing Leon in the ribs.

"It's the fact that he's got a seat next to Lady Elaine!" Gwaine said with a grin.

Leon blushed. "Well—she just asked if I would like to join her—"

"—In bed!"

Before Leon could reply with a sufficiently witty comeback, or reply at all, the doors to the great hall were thrown open with an almost deafening crash.

…

_**A/N:**__ Yes, you read that right._

_Arthur just got Rick Roll'd. _

_No, we're not sorry._

_Especially Gwaine._


	2. Chapter 2

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

...

_In which Kilhwch arrives, Arthur knights him despite Leon's reservations, Merlin is not the only one who does magic, a tacky garden gnome is a much better gift than being rick roll'd, Gwaine is Camelot's nicknamer, and Galehaut and Lancelot discuss girls._

...

"Hey, hey, heeeeyyy!"

Gwaine turned toward the doors, prepared, at worst, to draw his sword, or at best, to be annoyed—after all, _he _was the knight without whom the proverbial party did not start til he walked in—but found himself, upon clapping eyes on the visitor, pleasantly surprised.

"Kilhwch?" Arthur cried, and stood up.

Gwaine nodded at the newcomer, who flashed a smile and pointed in his direction before being crushed in a bear hug by the King, who had actually got up from his seat and rushed his cousin. The reunion was nothing short of precious, the two of them laughing and grinning and punching each other in the arm.

Which was why Leon turning pale and frowning had Gwaine very confused.

"Leon?" he hissed, elbowing the other knight. "What's wrong?"

Leon licked his lips. "It's...he...oh, God!"

Gwaine shook his head at the taller knight, determined to clarify what had his breeches in a bunch later. Now he stood and made his way over to the happy couple, along with Gwen and the rest of the knights.

"Gwaine! Percival, Lancelot, guys—I want you to meet my cousin: Kilhwch—Kilhwch, these are my Knights of the Round Table: Sir Gwaine, Sir Percival, Sir Lancelot, Sir Elyan, and Sir Galehaut."

"I've already had the pleasure," Gwaine said, holding up his hand to slow Arthur down as he offered the other for Kilhwch to shake. "How'd you find Camelot?"

"Oh, just as quaint as you said it would be," Kilhwch replied with a knowing grin and a wink, shaking his hand heartily.

"Wait, how do you know each other?" Arthur demanded.

"Oh, Arthur," Kilhwch said, clapping his cousin on the back, "still haven't changed, 'eh? This guy cannot _stand_having secrets kept from him!" he laughed loudly and punched Arthur in the arm. The other knights joined in on the laughter. Merlin looked uncomfortable.

Then Kilhwch caught sight of Queen Guinevere, who stood demurely in the background. "Helloooo, what have we here?" he asked, suddenly serious. He approached her, bowing low, and "My lady, my name is Kilhwch, son of Kilydd. Your servant," he said, kissing her hand.

Gwen nodded, strangely cool and aloof, and did not speak until Arthur approached. "This is my wife, Queen Guinevere. Gwen, Kilhwch is my cousin on my mother's side." Then he smiled broadly, back to being ecstatic. "My God, Kilhwch, I've missed you! How many years has it been? This calls for a celebration! What brings you here, cousin?"

"Well, Arthur, you know how it is, kicking around the castle the whole time, mother always nagging me to get out and seek my fortune, and, well, I thought, 'Let's go see how Arthur's doing!' and I get here and find out you're King, you're married to the most beautiful creature on earth, your knights are the finest in the land...Quite the setup you've got here!"

Arthur was practically bouncing. "That settles it! Merlin! Merlin, fetch me my sword—I must knight my cousin!"

Gwaine grinned broadly. It had been a long time since he had seen Arthur this happy. He couldn't figure out why Leon and Gwen looked a little put-out by Kilhwch's presence, and sent it away to be dealt with later when he'd not had quite so much mead and was intent on enjoying himself tonight.

"What's his name again?" Elyan whispered to him. "It's a bloody mouthful!"

Kilhwch turned and raised an eyebrow. Elyan blushed, not intending to be overheard. "Don't I know it!" he sighed, "It's 'Kilhwch.' Kill-hook, but like you're hawking up a loogie. It's a terrible name!"

Gwaine chuckled. "We could call you 'K'?"

"Oh, don't let Gwaine start," Lancelot grumbled. "He'd have everyone in the castle reduced to one-syllable names if given half a chance!"

"What's the matter? 'Lance' suits you just fine!"

But Arthur seemed to like this, too, or else it was already a nickname, for he had already produced a sword and was reciting, "I dub you Sir K, Knight of Camelot."

…

Leon gulped, trying to stop himself from—what? Getting livid? Throwing "Sir K" out on his lying, cheating ass? Punching him senseless, right there in front of God and everyone?

"What's wrong?" Merlin whispered as Arthur welcomed the beknighted K with another hearty slap on the back.

Leon sighed, hoping that would release some of his tension. "We were kids together," Leon said through gritted teeth. "Well, I say together—Uther had me look after Arthur and—and _him_—" But just saying that stirred up a host of memories that Leon had tried for the past ten of fifteen years to forget. The machinations of the pre-teen Arthur and his cousin had made Leon's life hell for several miserable winters. The running off, the stealing, the stupid and dangerous pranks—

He turned to Merlin and took his shoulder. "Merlin, don't trust him. He's a lying, sadistic—"

"Sadistic? You wouldn't be talking about me, would you?"

Leon stood very still as K approached with the all-too-familiar smarmy grin on his face, all the while thinking,Maybe he's changed, maybe he's finally learned to be decent. He barely forced a smile as K patted him on the shoulder.

"Leon, isn't it?" K said. "Remember me? "How long has it been, Arthur?"

"Must have been fifteen years," Leon managed.

"Fifteen years! Still running after Arthur, are you? Haha, I kid, I kid, but seriously, you're hair's getting a bit thin, don't you think? But you were ancient all that time ago, anyway! How old are you, now?"

"Er—"

"Must be well-over thirty-five, by now, eh? Well, say no more, say no more, your secret's safe with me." He sighed. "Ah, seeing you brings back memories! Leon is a Camelot institution!" He smacked Leon in the chest. "Remember the time we put black boot polish on your brown shoes? And you went around blaming the servants!"

"Classic!" Arthur said as they fell into bouts of laughter.

"That—wasn't funny—" Leon said, "A servant got sacked…."

"…Priceless," K said as he wiped a tear from his eye. "It's good to see you, anyway, we'll have to try sparring again sometime. Oh—by the way, your cloak's on inside-out."

Leon looked down, and blushed as he realized that, somehow, he had managed to spend the entire night with his cloak inside out. As he fixed it in a haze of livid rage and blushing embarrassment K wandered off to talk to Merlin, and one thought stuck in his mind: _Well, he hasn't changed a bit. How nice. _

…

With growing unease, Merlin stood nearby and listened to Sir K, who he wasn't increasingly sure was actually tormenting Leon, and not merely kidding with him. He was finally convinced when K mentioned Leon's receding hairline. They all knew you just didn't mention this kind of thing to Leon directly, even if it had become increasingly clear that his hairline did indeed seem to be getting further and further up his forehead every year—or so Merlin had been told, because he hadn't really bothered noticing. In fact, as K continued badgering the eldest knight, Merlin was even happier to slip into the background unnoticed, hoping he'd remain that way and be able to sneak off without having words with Arthur's cousin.

So it came as somewhat as a surprise as he was staring past Leon and saw a vague shimmer as the emblem on Leon's cloak disappeared. Blinking, Merlin realized he could see the carefully sewn seams that never showed on the front of the knights' cloaks, and realize that the cloak had turned itself inside out. At first he was panicked- had he accidentally done that? He'd been a little distrustful of his magic since that whole ordeal with the castle malfunctioning. That was when K mentioned to Leon that his cloak was turned inside out, without the blonde ever turning around. Merlin stopped wondering if he'd accidentally magicked Leon's cloak to turn inside-out. It had, astonishingly, been K. Clearly Arthur didn't know, or Merlin doubted he'd have been so happy to see his cousin.

Merlin looked sharply at K, but before he could do anything, Leon was huffily fixing the cloak and K was drawing him aside to chat with him. Merlin looked around, attempting to find something that needed doing, but everything was already being done.

"So! Merlin, is it? I've heard about you!" he said, grinning disarmingly. Merlin smiled back like a bewildered fawn.

"Er, yes?" he said, though whether this was an answer or a question was not exactly clear.

"Yes! You're my cousin's manservant, of course I've heard about you," he said, putting a hand on Merlin's shoulder so he couldn't mumble an apology for being busy and run off. "I think we're going to get along, Merlin," he added.

"Er, why?" he asked, fearing that all these questions were not really making him sound very intelligent. He couldn't think of any reason he'd want to be friends with this noble, who apparently thought it was hilarious to get servants fired. Also, Leon so rarely said a word against anyone (except maybe Gwaine) that Merlin reasoned Sir K had done something fairly awful to incite the other knight to such anger at the mere sight of him.

"Why, because," here he looked around conspiratorially, and added a bit more quietly, "Because you do magic too, of course!" he said, and Merlin was taken aback. Luckily, when he was taken aback, he tended towards blank looks that could have been mistaken with either complete confusion or thoroughgoing stupidity, and he only paused a moment before blinking and stepping away from K.

"I… have no idea what you're talking about, but you better not let the King find out, if you plan on sticking around for long," he said, but Sir K only laughed, which was if anything even more unnerving than his friendly behavior. Merlin decidedly, belatedly, that he didn't trust him as far as he could throw him- and that was without magic, since he probably could have chucked him right across the room with a spell if he had to.

"You're not a good liar, Merlin, has no one ever told you that? Alright, then, whatever you say," he chuckled and then stopped laughing, "But we both know better," he said with a grin, and walked past Merlin back over towards Arthur, detouring by a table on the way, where a parcel Merlin didn't think he'd noticed before was sitting. This he presented to Arthur, while Merlin skulked back to the table while trying to look like he wasn't doing so. He would have liked to say something to Gwaine about the magic thing, or to Leon that he wholeheartedly agreed about K's character flaws, but both of them were still standing with the king, so instead he went to bother Lancelot, who was going on at Galehaut about something, the two of them taking up the end of a table. When Merlin walked over, the ginger knight moved to the other side of the table next to Lancelot, and Merlin dropped onto the bench with a sigh. Lancelot finished what he'd been saying, and they both looked over at Merlin.

"Why, hello there, Merlin! How are you this evening?" Galehaut asked exuberantly, and then without pausing, went on, "We were just talking about—"

"About the crossbow and swords Arthur gave those two," Lancelot interrupted, though the quick glance he threw in Gwen's direction before gesturing with a nod at Leon and Gwaine fairly clearly betrayed what, or rather, who, they had actually been discussing. A little flicker of annoyance and dislike crossed Galehaut's face, but Merlin noticed only vaguely, watching K as Arthur opened the parcel to reveal a truly tacky little gnome with a red hat. It appeared to be made of stone or porcelain or something similar, and already Arthur was laughing and passing it around, clearly enamored. Not for the first time, Merlin wondered how it was that Arthur found such odd things to be inherently amusing.

"—a knife, didn't he, Merlin?" Hearing his name, Merlin tried to remember what Lancelot had just been saying, and realized he'd been asking about the knife.

"What? Oh, yes. He said it would have been a sword, but he couldn't have me taking out half the kingdom's fighting forces on accident, or something," Merlin answered with a grin. Next to him, Galehaut rolled his eyes at the comment as Gwen had done, and then grinned.

"Ah well, at least he remembered to give you something! Goodness knows you do enough work around this place!" Galehaut turned and looked at Arthur and the other knights, who were still admiring and laughing at the gnome statue, and his face took on an expression of both disgust and horror that made Lancelot also turn and look to see what had possibly caused that reaction.

"What in the world is that horribly tacky thing they're so excited about?" Galehaut asked, and Merlin had to laugh at the absolute astonishment in both his voice and Lancelot's slow, bemused headshake.

"That is Sir K's wedding gift," Merlin answered, "And I have no idea what's so amusing about it." Both knights shook their heads again in absolute bewilderment, but said nothing.

…

Merlin was eventually called away to help with the clean-up as everyone started to head to bed for the evening, leaving Lancelot and Galehaut alone at the table, with a jug of wine still to finish. There was a bit of silence while Lancelot stared across the room.

"You ought to stop looking at Guinevere like that," Galehaut said, seeing him staring. "Besides, I thought you were seeing Elaine."

"Elaine? No, that's Leon."

"No—the other Elaine. The one from the Lower Town."

"Oh, that Elaine," Lancelot said glumly. "I couldn't remember her name. You know she's the third one this month?"

Galehaut sighed, patting him on the back. "The right one will come along, Lance."

"She already has, and she's married another man," said Lancelot. He took a big drink of wine and sighed. "I'd better get off to bed." He glanced at Galehaut. "You're a true friend."

"Good friend, am I?" Galehaut giggled. "Thanks! You better hope I don't start giving you gifts like that, though," Galehaut said, indicating the gnome that was tucked under Arthur's sleepy arm as Gwen gently led him out of the hall.

Lancelot stared across the room, and wrinkled his nose. "Didn't that gnome have both of its hands behind its back?"

Galehaut raised an eyebrow, peering inside the now empty wine jug. "I think you're letting that business with the castle go to your head."

"Perhaps you're right." Lancelot said. He stood, and swayed on the spot. Luckily Galehaut was there to catch him.

"Alright?" Galehaut said from somewhere in the vicinity of his armpit.

"Fine," Lancelot said gruffly.

"Mmhm. Come on, up you come, Sir Drinks-a-lot…."

"Hey, watch it, Hauttie, that's Gwaine's nickname…."


	3. Chapter 3

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

…

_In which Sir Gwaine enjoys a nightmare waaaaaay too much and takes out his frustrations on Sir Leon, who just doesn't understand girls…_

_**Warnings:**__ It may do to re-state the warnings here, especially for s__exual themes, Gwaine being a kinky bastard, Leon being a repressed bastard, oh, and some inappropriate language._

…

_Her smile, like a shark, the wet curve of her lips asking, "Whatever shall we do to pass the time?"_

She kissed him—the sensation at once like fire and ice. She bit him until he tasted his own blood, and he retaliated, tasting hers.

"Someone likes it rough?" Her green eyes sparkled, her lips swollen and red with blood. The chains bit into his wrists and her nails dug into his sides and when he hissed, she chuckled, low in her chest so that it sounded like a growl and…

He _**liked**__ it._

It was monstrous! She was monstrous! _**He**__ was monstrous! It made him sick with disgust, and __**God**__! that made it even __**better**__! This wasn't his average everyday I'm-a-red-blooded-man and she's-a-woman-with-needs kind of lust. He needed her hatred as much as she needed his, if the way she was going after him was any indication._

"I am glad I please you," Gwaine commented, with a wry grin. Even here, even now, he found space for his pride to swell.

"I'll wait until you _**deliver**__ before I say you please me," she replied, nipping at his ear, making him suck in a breath._

She unchained him from the wall, using magic to pin him to the bed. He, high as a kite on whatever sorcery she had bewitched him with, went quietly. But he couldn't help wondering if he would have fought her even if she hadn't drugged him.

Their bodies rippled, at once tender and violent, sultry and sweaty, needy and angry. Her nails were as sharp as her skin was smooth. Her bedsheets were satin. Her hair tickled where it fell about him. She smelled coppery: like hard things, metal and blood, except her hair smelled like roses. Everything about her was cold. Her eyes, her touch, everything: and in the heat of the moment all he wanted was to press every inch of himself to her, to warm her, or perhaps to cool himself…  
  
Gwaine woke panting, drenched in sweat, his blankets kicked to the floor.

Among…other problems.

Why, oh, why on earth was he dreaming about _Morgana_? Was he remembering? Certainly he had missed _something_ when she captured him and bewitched him when they had infiltrated Tintagel, and God help him if he was remembering—but then again, maybe it would be worse if he was making all of this up.

Dawn was just breaking outside. Gwaine leapt out of bed, changed and dressed quickly. There were a few things he could see himself wanting to do right now, most of them fairly depraved, but at any rate sleep was not one of them!

…

Leon didn't have a very good night's sleep either. He hadn't had much good rest since he started semi-courting Elaine. That made the other knights howl with laughter when they heard it, and Leon would stammer that "he didn't mean like _that_" and try to explain what he was…feeling? He didn't have a lot of experience with feelings. His parents didn't exactly encourage emotive exploration, and Leon had developed exactly three different feelings—the first was the normal one, the second was the angry one, the third was this sort of odd stomach-tightening one that usually happened to him when Camelot was in danger. It wasn't fear, it was—concern. Or something.

Just sitting with Elaine for an hour or two during the Homecoming feast (that was about all her father would allow) made his heart beat fast and his hands itch and his ears burn. This feeling—if that's what it was—put thoughts in his head that he couldn't get out. It made him want to make love to her. It wasn't as romantic a thought as Lancelot made it sound in his poems. It was a guttural feeling, raw and graphic. The movement of her lips (lips that could rival those of the most beautiful goddess) intensified the feeling, as he imagined those lips kissing him all over, his beard rubbing against her neck in a secluded corridor, as his hands squeezed her silk-clad breasts—

It always devolved like that, making Leon feel like an utter pillock.

…Okay, so there were four emotions he understood, then. Still—he was perfectly happy with his four emotions, he didn't need another?

He got up early, only to find that Gwaine was already up, sitting in the armory with a jug of beer.

"When you say its five o' clock somewhere, I didn't think you meant five o' clock in the morning," Leon said.

Gwaine gave a grin, but it was forced. Leon figured it was just from the early hour—but why was he up, then?

"I know that look," Gwaine said, as Leon sat down.

"What do you mean?"

"You're lusting after someone." Gwaine's wicked grin told Leon he didn't need to guess.

Leon blushed. "You can't prove a thing."

"Sure."

They sat in silence for a bit. "…Is that what…" Leon gestured wildly, but how did you pantomime a feeling? "_this_ is?"

"_Oh_ yeah. Trust me."

Leon shook his head. "I can't stop thinking about her when we're apart, but then when we're together I just fall to pieces."

Gwaine laughed. "You've got it easy, mate."

"What? How is this easy?"

"Because there's hope for you. Oh, you'll pussyfoot around it, but eventually she'll probably ask you to marry her, or I'll succeed in getting you pissed enough to pop the question, and then you'll finally get laid and stop being a bloody constant annoyance!"

Clearly Leon had touched a nerve. "You shouldn't talk about women that way. They're a bit of an odd territory, I'll grant you, but—" he began, but Gwaine plowed on ahead.

"At least _you're_ not madly in lust with your worst enemy who'd just as soon eat your ballocks for breakfast as look at you—and I don't mean in a good way! She just couldn't keep her grabby hands to herself, and let me tell you, it clearly had been too long since her last meal by the time she sunk her claws into me! And now the vile woman put her 'fluence on me! I'm still having these glorious dreams about her chaining me to her bed and doing awful, terrible, evil, disgusting, wonderful things to me! And I know I shouldn't—and that only makes it me want it _more_!"

It seemed that Gwaine realized that he was shouting, and, for the first time, Leon saw him blush.

"…I was just saying I don't really understand women," Leon said.

Gwaine coughed. "Yeah?" He took a drink, hiding his face.

"What's all that stuff about grabby hands?"

Gwaine looked up from his beer as if he just realized Leon was there. "Hmm? Oh, nothing."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Nnnope."

"You sure?"

"Yes!" And with that Gwaine picked up his beer and left the armory, leaving Leon even more confused than before.


	4. Chapter 4

_In which K ruins Merlin's life, and Gwaine and Merlin are definitely not mad at each other..._

...

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

...

Merlin yawned and looked at the plates sitting on the table in the kitchens, idly sidestepping as the cook walked behind him with a bread-laden baking stone intended for the oven. He'd gotten up slightly earlier than usual because, this being Gwen and Athur's first "official" morning back from their honeymoon, and having not been able to make anything really decent-tasting while he'd been accompanying them, he'd wanted to take them a really good breakfast. It wasn't even that he'd had to get up much earlier than usual to accomplish it, but since he'd been up far, far too late the previous night at their welcome home banquet, he was feeling incredibly sleep-deprived. And also hungry, because he hadn't eaten yet either. His stomach growled, and he grabbed the plates to take them upstairs, because if he didn't do so soon, he'd probably end up eating one himself. That probably wouldn't go over well, although the mental image of Arthur's face if he handed a half-empty plate to him and said, "I made you breakfast, but then I ate it," did make him laugh.

He knocked before he entered, but the door was already slightly ajar and he heard three voices inside conversing, which made him pause for a moment before he remembered Arthur's visiting cousin. Then he shrugged. If K wanted to get up early to chat with his cousin, that was fine, but Merlin wasn't his manservant or his friend, so he wouldn't be getting him breakfast.

"Arthur, I brought you and Gwen—" he stopped suddenly, having turned from opening the door to see that Arthur and Gwen were already eating with K. They all looked up at him when he entered, and he stood foolishly holding the plates, wishing he could possibly hide them behind his back and spare himself the embarrassment. Clearly Arthur hadn't been responsible for the breakfast. Merlin was pretty sure he hadn't been in the kitchens in any of the years he'd known him, and besides… he'd been there the whole morning. Speaking of that, how had K snuck in and out without him noticing? Maybe he'd beaten him to the kitchens and left before Merlin had even showed up.

While he was standing there with what was probably a thoroughly stupid look on his face, K took the opportunity to speak up, and Merlin wondered if this hadn't been a deliberate attempt to elbow in on his own duties. If it had, why couldn't he have polished some bloody armor, and left Arthur and Gwen out of it? As much as Merlin dared, he gave K a withering look, but there was a limit to the angry faces you could make at the king's cousins with the king sitting right there staring at you. Especially when said king had known you for long enough to know when you were making irritated faces.

"I'm sorry, Merlin, did no one in the kitchens tell you I'd already been in?" K asked with infuriating innocence. Merlin forced himself to smile, and shook his head. "Well, I'm sure they just forgot. Perhaps someone else would be glad of the food?" he asked, and Merlin looked at the plates he was still holding. Past them, he caught a glance of that hideous gnome K had brought with him. It was standing next to one of the legs of the bed, staring straight forward with a cheery ceramic gaze. Straight forward? Hadn't it been looking off to the side last night? Merlin squinted at it, trying to remember, but he didn't remember things well when annoyed.

"Oh, come now, Merlin, don't be so sullen. It's one less thing you have to worry about! Besides, now you have more time to go deal with the horses. We'll be going on a hunt after K has met the knights at practice," Arthur said, which was possibly the one thing he could have said to make this morning even worse. Of course Merlin'd have to go along, and he hated hunts. But Arthur wasn't quite done talking. "And K is going to ride Diablo, since his horse is still tired. I'm sure Gwaine will let you borrow one of his horses," he said, the icing on the cake. Merlin muttered something that sounded vaguely like, "Yes, sire," and turned around to leave before anyone could say anything else. He went straight to the kitchens and dumped the food into a napkin to take to the practice field, where he was sure Gwaine or someone would eat it. He entered the armory to find that Gwaine was half-in, half-out of his armor, one whole sleeve of it sitting on the bench in front of him.

"Arthur and Gwen didn't want this, so I thought you might like it," Merlin said tiredly as he walked in, setting the tied up napkin next to the sleeve.

"Not right now, but if you leave it I'll eat it," Gwaine said around an end of one of the ribbons that tied the armor he was wearing together. Merlin's reaction was more overreaction, and mistaking Gwaine's statement for altogether not wanting the food, he threw both hands in the air with an annoyed growl and stalked back towards the door.

"Oi! What're you so cranky about?" Gwaine half shouted indignantly to him as he changed his mind and, instead of shouldering the door open, looked for something to fix. Aggressively.

"NOTHING," Merlin snapped, snatching up a nearby discarded arm guard that had broken in the middle of practice and endeavoring to repair it.

"Put that _down_, Merlin, you're just going to break it," Gwaine snapped, leaving the shoulder-plate he was wrestling with to drop, swinging on its hinge. He stalked over and snatched the bracer from Merlin's grasp.

"It's already broken," Merlin replied, snatching it back.

Gwaine, not really sure why he was so angry—well, of course he knew _why_, but why his freaky fantasy frustrations translated into being mad at Merlin for fiddling with a busted arm guard was beyond him—in fact, the whole scene was playing out like he was watching someone else do it—snatched the bracer back and cuffed Merlin in the back of the head. "Stop it, Merlin, my God, what's gotten into you this morning?"

"What's gotten into _you_?" Merlin shouted back. "You wake up on the wrong side of a hangover this morning? Or is this what you're always like when you're up before noon?"

"What the hell was that for?"

"I don't know! I brought you breakfast and you treat me like an idiot!"

"Maybe you are an idiot!"

"Takes one to know one!"

Gwaine advanced on Merlin, probably, in his current stupidly angry mood, about to do something truly idiotic like try to hurt his best friend whose lack of any kind of muscle mass belied the fact that he was actually a powerful sorcerer who could probably snap Gwaine's neck without any trouble. Just as he raised his hand, Gwaine saw Merlin's eyes sparkle gold, and perhaps in fear or perhaps realizing what he was about to do, he managed to rein in the retarded and his fist instead connected with the wall just to the side of Merlin's head.

Merlin flinched, the gold gone.

"I'm—" _WHAM_! "not—" _BAM_! "mad—" _CRASH_! "at—" _WHACK_! "you!" Gwaine gasped out as he repeatedly pounded his fist into the wall.

The good news was, this kept him from taking out his anger on the faultless Merlin. Also good, the pain in his hand and wrist now outweighed whatever might have been going on with his downstairs brain. It gave him something else to focus on, anyway, and perhaps even _satisfied_him, but he wasn't going to go there.

The bad news was—

"Holy fecking shite!"

Gwaine immediately turned away from Merlin, holding his wrist and fairly mangled hand. He didn't even want to look at it now. It was the same hand that not a week before had been shot clean through by—

Best not to think about her.

"Sorry!" Gwaine barked, like this was somehow Merlin's fault and it was painfully obvious he clearly hadn't actually worked anything out of his system and now Lancelot was going to kick his arse on the field because he wasn't going to be doing anything with his right hand and—

Gwaine stalked out the door before he could do something else massively stupid.


	5. Chapter 5

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

…

_In which the only bottle of agave spirits in all of Albion is worth more than Leon's virginity, and Merlin is not the only one playing hard-to-get. _

…

Gwaine skulked out of the armory, now wrestling with his plate mail one-handed and nursing a bruised ego. What was he doing, taking out his anger on poor, not-so-defenseless Merlin? Why was he angry? WHY WAS HE LETTING THIS GET TO HIM?

He had to get laid. Or completely pissed. Preferably both, preferably within an inch of his life.

"Ho, there, G!"

Gwaine looked up, trying not to bite Kilhwch's head off. "Morning, K," he growled.

"Hey, bro, need a hand?" K charged ahead, probably willfully not noticing Gwaine's foul mood. He set to screwing in the shoulder plate that had been giving Gwaine so much trouble, and then patted Gwaine on the back. "There we are. Hey! So! Training! Where is that again? Wait! Why don't you show me?"

Gwaine shrugged noncommittally.

"Everything all right, mate? You look like you could use a drink!"

That at least got Gwaine's attention. "Is it that obvious?" he asked, smiling sheepishly.

K winked invitingly, and produced a flask. He looked around and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Just between you and me, I may be in possession of the only bottle of agave spirits in all of Albion."

Gwaine took the flask, eyeing it like it was made of gold, diamonds, and sex. "You're kidding!"

"Try it!"

"Are you sure?" Gwaine looked around, too, now. "This has got to be worth more than..." he trailed off.

"The palace coffers?" K supplied helpfully.

"I was going to say Leon's virginity," Gwaine admitted.

K barked out a loud laugh that echoed down the hallway. "Ha! That's pretty funny—consider it stolen. And if that doesn't deserve a drink, nothing does! Might take the edge off that hand, there, too."

"It's fine," Gwaine grimaced—he still hadn't looked at his hand, as though maybe ignoring it would make the pain go away—and took a swig of the sharp, burning-sour-flavored liquid.

"God, that's good!" he said, once the euphoria had worn off, leaving behind a warmness and a sense that all was right with the world. K had also taken a drink and, so fortified, they made their way to the training grounds. Gwaine was almost jovial, having forgotten, for the moment, about his injured hand and his awkward dreams. "You're a good guy, K," Gwaine decided. "You liven the place up."

…

"Well? Did you find him?"

"Now, don't freak out, Leon…"

"I have every right to freak out. I know for a fact that Gwaine got up early this morning and yet he can _still_manage to be late for practice! How is that even possible? Anyway, I'm not freaking out."

"Don't worry," Galehaut said. "In about ten minutes he'll come around that corner with a bottle of some liver-pickling agent and ask what we were all waiting for."

And in a few minutes Gwaine did, with K at his side. There was no bottle to be seen but as they approached Leon distinctly smelled some kind of sour alcohol…

"Morning, everyone!" K said with a grin. "Having a late start, eh, _Léon_?" It seriously bugged Leon that K was one of the few people to pronounce his name correctly, but he tried to ignore it. "No matter—Arthur wanted you to introduce me today, anyway."

"Men, this is Sir Kilhwch of Cornwall," Leon said, making sure to give the name the correct inflection, which made more than one of the knights snicker. But Leon didn't want to give K any more time for chit-chat, so that was all the introduction he was going to get. "Everyone form partners, we will be sparring with sword and shield today."

The knights moved off and Leon started to follow them when K took him by the shoulder. "I hope you're going to give your lady over there a better show than shield practice," K said, with characteristic ease.

"What are you talking about?" Leon dropped down in front of one of the sword boxes and started to get things in order, hoping K would go away.

"Lady Elaine! Obviously!" He pointed at Elaine, who had taken up her usual spot near the front of the bleachers. "I introduced myself to her after you headed off last night. Really a sweet girl, I wouldn't mind looking after her myself, if you know what I mean. "

"No, I don't," Leon said, but as he said this K waved at her, and to Leon's horror she actually smiled and waved back. God, did _everyone_like him…?

"Seriously, though," K continued, "You're going to give her the wrong idea about you."

Leon tried to ignore him, pretending to be focused on getting the ties right on his scabbard.

"You shouldn't be so uptight. She's a woman—you're a man. You're supposed to rough her up. That's what you want to do, isn't it? Believe me, I can tell when a man is holding back."

"Holding—what?"

"You never could do anything fun in moderation, could you? It's alright, though—you don't want to be pulling any punches in this department." He turned and shouted at Elaine. "Don't worry, my lady! He'll soon show his teeth! Give him an inch and he'll walk a mile!"

"Leon! Get these men organized! I want to be done in an hour!"

Leon turned at the sound of Arthur's voice to see the young King approach and push in between him and K to get to the sword boxes. He was thankful for the excuse to get away, and stormed off through the crowd of knights as Arthur and K started chatting.

Gwaine reached out of the crowd and grabbed his arm. "Listen, Leon, I don't think I'll be training with shield today."

Leon smelled more than wine on his breath. "What else have you been drinking?"

"Just something K had. Why?"

Leon looked down to see Gwaine rubbing his hand, which was quite swollen. "What happened to your hand?"

"Nothing, okay?" Gwaine said, looking angry, too. "Is there a problem?"

"Leon, you never told me where to put these extra shields," Merlin said, appearing suddenly to tug at Leon's elbow.

"Hold on," Leon snapped, and turning back to Gwaine, said, "Look, if you can't show up for training ready to, I don't know, _train_…"

"I never said I wasn't ready to train," Gwaine said, his voice rising. "It's nothing! I just punched a wall, that's all! I didn't expect a kind of Inquisition!"

Merlin's tugging became more annoyed. "I've polished them once already, I'm not going to let them get dirty again—"

"Will you just stop for a second?" Leon barked.

"Well, you're the one that's freaking out!" Merlin snapped.

"I'M NOT FREAKING OUT—!"

"Whoa, now!" This came from, surprisingly Galehaut, who stepped forward and inserted himself in between the three of them as they turned to look. "What, what, _what_are you doing?"

Leon blushed, only now realizing how angry he got. Thankfully, Gwaine and Merlin looked embarrassed, too.

"We couldn't blame that on an enchantment, could we?" Gwaine said after the awkward silence, which got a laugh from Merlin.

Galehaut just tsk-ed. "No. It's just the typical masculine response to the introduction of new personalities into close quarters, combined with lack of sleep and a feeling of lack of appreciation."

Leon, feeling he had better make up first, said, "Sorry."

"Sorry."

"Sorry."

"Right," Galehaut said, clapping his hands, "Who's up for some calming stretches? Anyone?"

"Arthur might be," Merlin said, and to Leon's dismay he saw Arthur storming towards them. When he reached them he folded his arms, and cleared his throat.

"I'm sorry," Arthur said in his condescending sing-song voice as Leon looked down at his feet, "But are we having a training session with the Knights of the Round Table, who, need I remind you, I spoke very highly of last night? Because it _almost _looks like we're playing silly buggers!"

"Sorry, sire," Leon said quickly.

"I mean, really! I thought that I was going to have to pull you lot apart! If it wasn't for Galehaut—Galehaut, have I knighted you, yet?"

Merlin's mouth dropped open. Galehaut, for his part, turned as bright red as his hair. "Eh?"

"No, you haven't, sire," Leon said, grinning.

"Well, he deserves it. Goodness knows I wouldn't have jumped in there. Someone get me a real sword. Come on, we haven't got all day. The hunting party will leave no later than noon!"

Leon shook his head in exasperation at Arthur's flippant manner, although Arthur had in reality given the matter a great deal of thought and was simply waiting for the right time. As Galehaut nervously kneeled before Arthur and Arthur had his fun lording it over the new knight, Leon's eyes met K's again. He was grinning. "Aren't you going to thank me for stirring them up for you, Hauttie?" he said as Sir Galehaut rose from the field.

Apparently K's grin had the opposite effect on Galehaut that it did on Leon, because Galehaut only gave his characteristic laugh and walked off to the sword boxes with K, saying "You really _shouldn't_rile them up so, you naughty person," and proceeded to spar with him. But Galehaut could get on with anyone.

"Alright, Gwaine," Leon said, putting K from his mind. "We'll spar together. You're ambidextrous, aren't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Gwaine said, his manner getting hostile again.

"Nothing, just—"

"I'm joking, old man. I could beat you with both hands tied behind my back…"

…

As they finished training early and started saddling up for the hunt, Gwaine approached Merlin, head down, hands wringing, and obviously penitent.

"So..." Gwaine began.

Merlin laughed, held up a hand before he even began. "No, it's okay, Gwaine, I was at fault, too. I'm sorry."

"No, I—I just had a—er, a bad night," Gwaine said, determined to see this through to the end, "and I really shouldn't have shouted. Or tried to punch you, anyway. You're a good friend, and you deserve better than that. I was completely out of line, and I hope you can forgive me..."

"Gwaine?"

"Yes?" Gwaine tried, innocently enough.

"You're only like this when you want something from me."

Gwaine's transformation was instant. The sad, pleading eyes turned suddenly playful, and he laughed. "Damn, Merlin! I'm normally quite good at pretending to be sorry!"

Leon, who overheard this outburst, whipped his head around and scolded, "GWAINE!"

"_Sorry_, Leon," Gwaine practically begged, lowering his head and eyes and everything until Leon, satisfied, turned back to being distracted by the Lady Elaine. "See?" he added quietly with a wink at Merlin.

"You're hopeless," Merlin giggled, shaking his head at Gwaine. "What is it you want?"

Now Gwaine really was embarassed. He held up his hand, suddenly giving new meaning to being 'caught red-handed.' Merlin actually gasped a little, which didn't make him feel any better.

"Gwaine, why didn't you show me this immediately? I didn't know you'd hurt it _that_bad!"

"Oh, come on," Gwaine tried, his grin fading, "it's _not_that bad. I cleaned off the cuts. It just needs a wrap."

"This is the hand Morgana shot, isn't it?"

"Mmmmmaybe?" Gwaine shifted his feet.

Merlin grumbled to himself, inspecting the damage.

"So can you fix it?" Gwaine asked. He wagged his eyebrows, hinting wildly.

Merlin played coy, or at least dumb. "Well, I can wrap it up for now, but you really should have Gaius look at it. It's probably broken!"

"_No_, Merlin," Gwaine said. "I mean...you know... Can you..._fix_it?"

Merlin blinked.

"Christ, Merlin, do I have to _spell it out_?"

"_Ohh_!" Merlin squeaked, realizing he meant magic. "No, Gwaine, I can't!" He practically jumped back as he looked around guiltily.

"Oh, sure you can, come on," Gwaine hissed. "Nobody's looking."

Merlin shook his head, reclaiming Gwaine's hand and beginning to inspect it earnestly. In between Gwaine's hisses of pain, he explained in a low whisper, "Healing magic is incredibly hard to master, Gwaine. I simply can't do it most of the time. And I'm afraid if I tried I'd only make it worse. You can't just go around being reckless all the time and expect me to put you back together—"

"Ow! How did this become _my_fault?" Gwaine pouted.

"Yeah, right, because the _wall_totally started it," Merlin said, and with that, Gwaine deflated. There was silence as Merlin wrapped the injured limb. "So...do you need to talk about why—"

"No," Gwaine said hurriedly. Then, because he felt it was expected, though he figured he knew the answer: "Do you?"

"No!"

"Glad we got that cleared up, then," Gwaine smirked. He let his eyes wander to the gathering crowd. "Man, all these girls along to show off for and I'm crippled. Bugger this."

"Who's fault is that?" Merlin mock-scolded.

"Oh, yours," Gwaine said, but without malice. "Help me get the light saddle on Studly? That way if I have to let go of the reins I can—"

"Are you kidding, Gwaine? I'm not going anywhere near that terror! Shouldn't you ride one of your..._saner_horses, since you'll be riding one-handed?"

"One-handed?"

Merlin was looking at him like he was stupid. "Yes. Do I need to put it in a sling to remind you?"

"What?"

"Gwaine, you _broke your hand!_You have to let it heal!"

"And, what, cock the crossbow with my teeth?"

Merlin looked at him, appalled, probably on multiple levels.

"I was _kidding_, Merlin. Don't be such a girl."


	6. Chapter 6

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

…

_In which a Prank War is begun, Merlin tries his aim at hunting, Elaine cannot be obvious enough for Leon, and Arthur finds another one of those stupid gnomes…_

…

All the horses were saddled, the dogs were milling about like confused ants at a disturbed ant mound, and the knights were trying to find their various and sundry hunting weapons. Merlin was staying out of the way, holding the reins of the placid Diablo, who was standing with a hind leg cocked and half-heartedly sniffing at a tuft of grass by Merlin's feet. K was also muddling around looking for his weapons, and didn't appear capable of leading a horse around with him without causing a minor wreck, so he'd left it to Merlin to make sure the black horse didn't go wandering off.

"Ah, there you are, Merlin! What are you doing with Diablo? You're supposed to be riding one of Gwaine's horses," Arthur said, stopping next to Merlin for a moment, "And I need you to find my spear, in case we see any boar," he added. Merlin gave him a look that strongly implied he had a few words to say about the individual who should have been looking after Diablo, but instead he turned to another of the servants running around and asked the young boy to hold the reins so he could go find the blasted spear. It was right where it was supposed to be, of course, which was probably why Arthur hadn't been able to find it.

As they were all finally about to mount up and head off to the forest, Gwaine came practically bounding up to Merlin, carrying the reins of a perpetually startled-looking little grey horse.

"Oh, no. I'm not riding Willow! He'll run off and throw me in the lake or something!" Merlin protested as Gwaine handed him the reins.

"Do you always complain this much, or is today a special occasion?" Gwaine asked, and when Merlin looked about to get angry all over again, held up both hands in mock-surrender. "Joking! I was only joking. Don't worry, I won't let Pussy Willow run off with you. Just stay by me and Studly Royale here, and you'll be fine," he said. The other horse in question was currently looking at Merlin with what he was convinced was a look of pure evil. But Gwaine only laughed and harassed Merlin until he swung into Willow's saddle.

"I am going to die," Merlin stated morosely, staring at the grey ears in front of him.

"What, and rob us all of your charming optimism and eternal good-naturedness? Banish the thought," Gwaine joked. Since he was facing his own horse, about to drag himself one-handed into the saddle, he missed the tell-tale yellow eyes of his friend doing magic. He also missed the ever so slight stretch of the leather boots on his feet as they grew perhaps a whole size. But when he went to put his boot in the tall stirrup, he fumbled and nearly fell when Royale decided to step away at the last moment. Merlin laughed and said something smart that was lost under Arthur's shout as they all moved out. Turning to catch up with the king, Merlin noticed that K had already taken up his usual place on the king's right, and he fell back a few paces, looking crestfallen and wildly out of place until Leon rode up next to him.

"Arthur seems glad to see his cousin," Merlin said, trying not to sound cranky. Leon looked forward at the pair of them and snorted softly.

"That makes one of us, then," he said, and Merlin actually laughed, glad to hear someone else speaking less than enthusiastically about the new visitor.

…

It didn't surprise Leon that Merlin didn't like K either. K never liked servants, and he no doubt trod on Merlin's toes in some way since he arrived.

Leon made some room to allow Gwaine to ride next to him and Merlin as they headed out to the forest, but Gwaine just gave them a wave and rode up to join K and Arthur at the front of the line instead, and, a moment later, they took up the hunt after a boar.

"Look at them," Leon sighed to Merlin as he watched them. "They're so chummy they could be _related_."

"I imagine K likes hunting as much as Arthur," Merlin groaned. "It'll be ages before we're through."

"Cheer up, Merlin!" Leon said, hefting his new crossbow onto his shoulder. "Here, I've got a riddle for you.

_A serpent swam in a silver urn,  
A golden bird did in its mouth abide.  
The serpent drank the water, this in turn  
killed the serpent, then the gold bird died_."

"Geoff's been helping you find these last ones, I'm sure of it," Merlin said, still apparently determined to be cross despite his thoughtful expression. But for all of Merlin's complaints he had guessed Leon's last two riddles within a few minutes of the telling, and Leon recognized the look that Merlin got when he was close to working it out.

"While you're thinking about that," Leon said, eager to distract the young man from guessing the answer for a bit at least, "you can try out the crossbow."

"What?" Merlin's eyebrows shot up. "No! I mean, it's yours! Besides, I don't like hunting."

"Merlin, have you even _tried_ hunting before?"

"Uh, _no_! I'm a servant. I'm just supposed to whack the bushes with sticks and shout 'hey-ho!' and 'wha-hey' and other stupid sounding things that Arthur can come up with."

"Well, you've got a horse to ride— you might try a shot or two and find you like it."

"But—! None of you are wearing armor!"

"You're not going to hit anyone," Leon laughed. "Here, I think you'll find this one's easier to work with than others."

As he handed the crossbow over to Merlin, he happened to glance back and see what he had already suspected—that Gwen and Elaine were riding directly behind him. Once Gwen announced that she would be joining the hunting party, a few other ladies also decided to come, among them being Elaine. He could hear them talking behind him, and didn't want to interrupt.

Besides, he saw a pheasant hiding in a bush not twenty feet away!

"Here, Merlin, try to aim for that pheasant," he whispered, trying to ignore the women as he pointed excitedly. Merlin furrowed his brow but decided to humor Leon and, once he managed to winch the first bolt into place, took aim.

"Like—like this?" he said uncertainly.

"Try to get the sights aligned," Leon said with a grin. He loved teaching people, especially Merlin. It was kind of like a father-son bonding moment. "It might help to close one eye the first time. Get it against your shoulder there...there we go."

As he reached over to show Merlin how to hold the crossbow properly he heard a gasp and glanced back to see Elaine looking at him with a concerned look on her face.

"You've dropped your reins!" she said, sounding worried.

Leon looked down. He was so used to steering his horses using leg pressure that he often dropped the reins without noticing. But he did notice that Elaine looked quite ill-at-ease atop her horse, though.

"It's alright, my lady," Merlin said with a grin. "Leon's got it under control. He's very good with things in between his—" he stopped, suddenly realizing he should have stopped talking, like, ten seconds ago. He turned back to the crossbow with overly-interested focus. "Anyway, is this how I hold it?"

Leon tried to ignore Elaine's giggles, turned back to the task at hand. "Yes, you've got it. Steady…steady…now, there's going to be a bit of a recoil, so hold firm, and just ease the trigger back."

Merlin, who looked like he had both eyes closed, gave the trigger a squeeze. But he apparently wasn't expecting the recoil to be quite so strong, and physically rocked back in the saddle as the crossbow bolt went into the bushes with a squawk and a frantic explosion of feathers.

"Good shot!" Leon said, punching the horrified Merlin on the shoulder. "You just grazed it. Quick, fire again-!"

"Wh-what? I _hit_ it?"

"Yes!" Leon said, trying to sound congratulatory though he was starting to feel uncertain as a look of abject horror appeared on Merlin's face.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to!" Merlin whined, the crossbow shaking in his hands.

Leon steadied his arm. "Come on, Merlin, put it out of its misery!"

Merlin whimpered an "I'm sorry!" and shot again. There was another squawk, another explosion of feathers—

"Leon its not dead yet!"

Leon gulped. He had never before seen a pheasant take _two_ crossbow bolts like that! Now it was flopping around desperately, blood spattering everywhere.

"Now, it's alright, Merlin—!" Leon said urgently.

"No it's not!" Merlin screamed as the pheasant flopped toward them, making Pussy Willow whinny. "LEON, IT'S COMING AT ME! LEON, HELP!"

Leon, realizing the situation was hopeless, grabbed the crossbow from Merlin, pulled Pussy Willow and Merlin behind him and his horse, and fired with one hand. Just once. The pheasant lay still at his horse's feet, three crossbow bolts sticking out of it.

"There," Leon said. "See? Hunting's fun."

Merlin was trembling from head to toe, and had gone as white as a sheet.

"Merlin!" Arthur's voice called from up ahead. "We've spotted a hart—come on!"

Merlin gave Leon a look of terrified anguish and rode off miserably after Arthur. Leon tried to avoid Elaine's look of concern as he urged his horse forward. But Merlin's lost innocence was soon forgotten amidst the thrill of hunting something bigger than a pheasant. He tried to show off a little as they chased the deer down, weaving in between the trees and firing his crossbow with perfect precision at the quarry. Once everyone got back into formation and the reshuffling had settled down Leon found himself riding side-by-side with Elaine.

"That was fantastic!" she said. "I wish I could ride a horse like that!"

"It's not hard, once you've gotten used to it," Leon said. He indicated the straw-colored horse she was riding. "Is this one yours?"

"No, this is one of my father's. I have another horse at home—more a pony, really—not so big as this one. Not that big is a bad thing."

Leon wasn't going to say anything, but at this he felt he had better say something to avoid that awkward silence. He coughed. "Has Lord Bernard chosen a day for your departure?"

"He says he would like to return to Ascolat by the end of the month."

"This month?" Leon gulped. They had stayed longer than the other wedding guests, but there was no reason for them to leave so soon as that! He needed time to keep inadvertently meeting her and accidentally have an excuse to talk to her and—well, keep doing this kind of thing.

"Yes." She grinned. "I shall have to enjoy your company while I can, I suppose."

"Oi! I found something!"

"Excuse me," Leon said, his heart beating a mile a minute. Feeling a bit more dashing than was proper, he urged his horse onward without picking up the reins, sending it charging forward with the other knights and with his crossbow held high.

But he could see no game when he thundered to the front of the party and pulled up beside Gwaine. Gwaine was pointing into a thicket.

"Another pheasant?" Leon guessed, taking aim.

"No, it's shiny!" Gwaine said. He swung his leg over, but seemed to have difficulty getting his foot out of the stirrup so he could dismount, and was jerking hard at it. "It was—some kind of—reddish—thing—!"

"That's odd— are you sure?"

"Yes! AH!"

Leon looked over just in time to see Gwaine, who had finally pulled his foot free, promptly fall over. Leon rolled his eyes as Gwaine pulled himself out of the grass, and dismounted, approaching the bush with his crossbow ready to fire. Very gently he used the tip of the crossbow to brush a branch out of the way, then cringed as he heard Arthur squeal behind him, "Look! Another gnome! Bring it here, Leon, let's have a look at it!"


	7. Chapter 7

_In which Sir Gwaine cautions the King about his growing collection of garden gnomes, Sir K is an ass, Sir Leon takes his shirt off and Merlin just takes off. _

...

It took Gwaine a while to figure out that the problem with his boots was Merlin's doing, but in his defense, it didn't take him _that_long.

But even that his boots kept slipping off his feet when he was walking, and sticking in his stirrups when he was riding couldn't ruin the thrill of the hunt. K was hilarious, and Arthur was even in an tolerable mood, and if Merlin and Leon were sulking in the back, well, that was their problem. It may even save him from getting Merlin back for the shoe thing—of course, little devil, he couldn't do anything here, now, without causing any trouble. He could imagine it:

_"Gwaine, why are you holding Merlin by his ankles upside-down over a stream?"_

"He magicked my shoes bigger!"

Yeah, that would go over well. Even if they believed him—which they wouldn't, they would laugh at him and say he shouldn't joke about such a thing—and even if they did, well that would just get Merlin in trouble. Or, you know, dead.

And Gwaine didn't want Merlin dead, he just wanted him to, you know, suffer a little bit.

So he waited.

Until then, he could deal with the shoe problem. It would be worth it. And anyway, things were going great. They'd got a few pheasants, a boar, and spotted a hart, even, though so far it had eluded them. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, glinting off something suspicious in the brush—

"Look, another gnome! Bring it here, Leon, let's have a look at it!" Arthur cried, like a giddy child at Christmas. An intolerably _stupid_, giddy child.

"I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Gwaine said, realizing as he stepped toward Leon and the gnome that he'd quite left one of his boots stuck in his stirrup, but he ignored this small problem in favor of the bigger one: "I think we should leave it."

"What? Why?" Arthur wondered, like he believed Gwaine was stupid. "And what on earth is wrong with your shoes? Did you accidentally put on Percival's boots this morning?"

The knights laughed, and before Gwaine could reply, Percival pointed and laughed. "Look at him! He's got tiny little hooves for feet! Comedy!" Elyan laughed loudly, and, so encouraged, Percival continued: "You know what they say about men with small feet…"

Gwaine's voice broke through the sophomoric laughter. He knew how to deal with Percy:

"No, Perce, what do they say?" he prompted suggestively, and, sure enough, Percival blushed bright red to his ears at even the thought of having to say the word "penis." Or "sock" or whatever the punchline to that stupid joke was.

Gwaine whipped his head around, hair flicking dramatically. "Leon, don't touch that…thing!"

Arthur had now hopped off his horse and picked the gnome up. "Cor, look! This one has a tiny shovel!"

"Arthur…" Gwaine growled, but Arthur wasn't listening, and Gwaine imagined that the conversation he wanted to have would go over about as well as an accusation about Merlin doing magic:

_"These little buggers come to life when you're not looking and eat your eyes out!"_

"It's made of stone, Gwaine, what are you talking about?"

"No—look—it's only stone when you're looking at it-I know it makes no sense, but it's true—"

"Oh, never mind!" Gwaine finally huffed, wrenching his boot from his stirrup and slipping it—too easily—on his foot. Behind him, Studly was just beginning to get frisky when Gwaine remembered to grab his reins, petting the titanic horse's nose and cussing softly at him to calm him. "It's just not my bloody day, is it, Stud?"

"What was all that about?" Leon had stepped up behind him, actually looking concerned, bless him.

"Oh, nothing," Gwaine sighed. "Just if Arthur wakes up dead don't come crying to me!"

"Dead? Gwaine, is the King in danger?"

"No. Yes. Maybe."

"You seemed worried about—" Leon grinned widely, "about the gnome statue—"

"It's not a statue."

Leon's grin faded. "What?"

"It's…" Gwaine sighed. "You won't believe me," he said, turning back to his horse to negotiate how he was going to wrest himself up there without losing his shoes and wondering if the hand-in-warm-water trick was punishment enough for Merlin…

Leon grabbed his elbow, turning him about. "I promise you I will try."

He just looked so bloody sincere. It was refreshing, really. Gwaine shrugged, trying not to show how pleased Leon's trust actually made him. "These may just be simple statues. But if they're anything like the gnomes I saw in Saxony…well, they're not statues. They turn into statues when you're looking at them, but when you look away, they come to life…"

"That seems a little far-fetched, Gwaine." Leon was clearly trying not to grin, and even though he was making a valiant effort, that was where Gwaine's patience ran out. The foul mood returned, and he was pretty sure the little gnomey buggers could eat the lot of them before Gwaine would care right now. So he flashed Leon a condescending grin before turning back to his steed:

"Oh, I'm not worried," Gwaine said. "They only have a taste for noble blood, see, so I'm safe!"

"Wait—they _eat_people?" Leon cried, as Gwaine pulled himself up into the saddle.

"Yup. Something about revenge of the forest—hunting their lands, cutting down trees—you know. That's at least what I heard. Come on, now, Leon, don't want to be left behind now, do we?" he said, and more letting Studly have free reign than urging him on, Gwaine tore off into the forest.

…

"Revenge of the—what?"

But Gwaine was already thundering off. Leon sighed, mounted and rode off after Gwaine. He found him taking up position, waiting for Arthur to flush another deer towards them. Sir K, Merlin and Percival were spaced out equidistantly along the same line. Leon joined Gwaine at his position.

"Gwaine—when you say 'revenge of the forest'—I mean, that's just a peasant's legend, isn't it? That's why they put those gnomes in their gardens."

Gwaine shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. I hear that they're supposed to protect crops from being pillaged by wandering knights."

"Where did you hear about this?"

He gave Leon a sidelong glance. "I told you travel broadens the mind."

"I believe you," Leon said, who had never been outside of Albion in his life. He sat back in his saddle, and happened to glance down the line of knights and servants waiting for Arthur to arrive. They all looked pretty bored, except for Sir K. He seemed to be having loads of fun making his horse go in circles—wasn't that the horse Merlin usually rode? Diablo?

"So, do we tell Arthur?" Gwaine asked, but Leon wasn't paying attention. K had started hauling on Diablo's reins while he was clearly raking his spurs along the horse's sides. Didn't he know that was just going to make the horse rear up?

Leon caught Merlin's eye, who was watching K from his position about ten yards away farther down, looking like a kicked puppy. It was obvious that he was all too aware that K was being a bloody idiot to the horse, and it seemed to be upsetting him a great deal. But servants weren't allowed to speak up about that sort of thing. If a knight or any noble wanted to be an ass , it was no servant's place to say anything against it.

It was another noble's place, though.

"Leon?" Gwaine said. "Something up?"

"Hang on a minute," Leon said, and promptly rode over to K. But K was too busy struggling with the horse to notice him. "K, what are you doing?" he asked, trying to be polite and tactful as he lowered his voice.

"I'm trying to get it to rear," K growled with no little annoyance. "If I can get this lump of a beast into the air just as the deer comes it'll go right back into Arthur's path and we'll get a straight shot at it."

"You should never force a horse to rear," Leon said, hoping beyond all hope that K seriously did not know this fundamental concept.

K raised an eyebrow, looking at Leon as if he just told him that horses could speak English as well. "Really?" He flicked the reins as he wrapped them around his hands, causing Diablo to snort and paw at the ground in distress.

_Come on, Leon, stand firm,_ he thought to himself. _Don't let him bully you…_"I think you're hurting its mouth by doing that," he said. "Could you let the reins hang a bit looser?"

K cocked his head, and Leon felt himself balking under K's gaze. "Leon, I appreciate your concern, but I think I know what I'm doing." He pulled hard on the reins again. Merlin looked so upset that he was about to jump out of his saddle.

Leon reached out and grabbed Diablo's reins.

K, who had expected the horse to go back instead of down, pitched forward. He looked at Leon with astonishment, as if Leon's actions were completely uncalled-for. "Leon!" he said, eyebrows raised. "Are you trying to boss me?"

"Killhwch, please," Leon said, trying to keep his nerve in the face of that K's awful grin and hoping that he didn't look as scared as he felt. He tried to stop K from doing something before, but K always served his revenge hot. They were grown men now, though. They weren't kids anymore. "We aren't kids anymore," he said, just in case K had missed this important fact. "Just—leave off it, alright?"

But Leon didn't even get half a second to hope that K would actually listen to him, because almost before he finished speaking K gave him a shove.

Leon scrambled to stay seated, and Diablo squealed as K dug the spurs into his sides and yanked back on the reins, finally forcing the horse into the air at just the right moment to fully unhorse him. Leon fell, hard and with a resounding crunch, into a large thorn bush.

"Whoa!" K said dramatically over Leon's yelp, managing to force Diablo back down again just as Gwaine, Merlin and Elyan rushed forward.

"Sorry, I really don't know what came over the horse," K said. "It must have knocked him out of the saddle!"

"Leon, are you alright?" Merlin said, looking concerned.

Leon groaned, blinking back stars.

"Oi! You let the deer get away! What happened?" It was Arthur, who finally arrived and dismounted.

"Sorry, Arthur," K said anxiously as he wrung his hands together. The display was enough to make Leon sick—thankfully, his expression was lost among the winces of pain. "The horse went mad! Leon was trying to help, bless him….Awfully sorry, Leon," he said, turning on Leon with that devilish glint in his eye. "Here, let me help you up!"

But Leon didn't exactly feel like getting out of the thorn bush, which, he knew full well, would only cause more thorns to pierce his armorless body. "I'm fine," he grunted.

"Are you sure?" K said, reaching down. "Here, I'll help you out—"

"No, don't—!"

But K had already grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled, dragging Leon forcibly through the thorn bush. Since K was far too scrawny to actually pull Leon out the whole way, and Leon was desperately fighting him the whole way, K more rolled him out of the bush than lifted.

"Alright, there, Leon?" Arthur said as Leon slowly straightened. "It's lucky that bush was there to—er—cushion your fall."

Leon said nothing. He wondered if the fall hadn't knocked a few of his ribs the wrong way. He rolled his shoulder to work out the pain, and winced.

"You know better than to grab another man's horse like that!" Arthur continued. He sighed. "Well, get mounted, I suppose we're finished for the day…"

"I'm alright, sire," Leon said, brushing off his trousers. "You go on with the hunting, I'll catch up."

"You sure?" But it didn't seem that Arthur needed much convincing to continue the hunt. He nodded and jumped back on his horse.

"Hope you'll be joining us again soon, Leon," K said, and patted Leon on the shoulder (embedding a few thorns even deeper into his skin) before he too remounted and to follow Arthur after the deer.

…

Gwaine was pretty sure he saw more of what had just transpired than Arthur or the others, mainly because he was, as was his habit, watching Merlin and Leon (which, yeah, yeah, whatever, so maybe he had a small protective streak, and which Kilhwch had maybe just rubbed the wrong way). Whatever had happened, it made Leon and Merlin frown and squirm and look not at all pleased.

And since Diablo and Llamrei were well-behaved horses...the only other variable was Sir K.

"What the hell was _that_?" Gwaine hissed, riding up next to K.

Kilhwch was the picture of guilt. And grinning widely. Damn him, if Gwaine didn't admire the man even now. He didn't even try denying it:

"Oh, I wasn't hurting the dumb beast," he laughed.

"I wasn't talking about the horse," Gwaine corrected, though he petted Diablo's nose soothingly, making a mental note to check his mouth later when he could get a good look at it.

"Neither was I!" K laughed.

And it was funny. And Gwaine was cheap. So he laughed, too.

"Seriously, man, just lay off. Leon doesn't need any help looking awkward, and Merlin gets enough stress from Arthur. Help me out, here."

"For you, Sir Gwaine, of course," K said, genuinely as far as Gwaine could tell. "After all I was only trying to get Leon to toughen up a little and—well, look what's going on over there!"

Gwaine turned to where K pointed:

"He's got his shirt off!" he yelped, trying not to bellow.

"Yes."

"And Elaine's there, helping him!"

"Yes."

"And...I think we should leave!" Suddenly Gwaine grabbed K's arm and guided both their horses away after Arthur and the others, who had moved on, in order to leave the two love-birds alone. K was laughing as Leon and Elaine disappeared behind them. "Why didn't I think of that? And you're right, Leon could use some toughening up. You really _did_know what you were doing, didn't you, K?" Gwaine grinned, clapping the other knight on the back.

"Sir Gwaine, I _always_ know what I'm doing."


	8. Chapter 8

_In which Merlin makes a discovery, and Sir Leon wouldn't know true love if it was staring him in the face..._

...

It wasn't that Merlin wasn't happy that Leon had intervened and told K to stop being an ass to poor Diablo, but as the knight spurred the black horse forward with far more enthusiasm than necessary, forcing him to catch up with Arthur's horse, Merlin realized it hadn't actually helped much. He tried to follow close by, so at least he would know what injuries to check the horse for when they finally got home, but there was too much going on. Also, Pussy Willow was possibly the jumpiest horse on the face of the planet, shying at shadows and butterflies and birds, and Merlin was kept busy just trying to keep him with the others. As it was, he missed that they were all getting ahead of him until they'd all gone and were not entirely visible through the thick forest undergrowth.

"Hey! Hey wait!" he called out, urging the flighty horse forward. They had gone all of five feet forward when a pheasant, frightened out of hiding by all the previous passers-by, burst out of the bushes by Willow's feet with a racket of clattering wings and shrieking. Willow took one look at the thing, decided it was a horse-eating dragon, and wheeled to the right with a squeal. Before Merlin could yank in enough rein to stop him, Willow took off in a blind panic, flying through the forest in such a mad rush that Merlin couldn't do much but hold on and hope they wouldn't be completely lost when the crazy horse stopped. He ducked a branch that threatened to hurl him right out of the saddle and decided being flicked in the face by coarse mane was probably better than having his eye put out by an errant twig—though only just.

Willow finally slowed down to a somewhat more sane canter, hopping a few small logs here and there, and then a trot, and finally wore himself out enough to walk. Merlin sat up, ran a hand absently down Willow's neck, and looked around for some hint as to where they were. He might have recognized the place and, then again, he might not have. But the horse seemed to have decided on a direction, so Merlin let him wander, hoping he was heading home. Certainly there was neither sight nor sound of the hunt in the vicinity.

Merlin thought at first that the bright light from ahead of them was coming through a clearing. But as they stepped from trees into bare dirt, he realized it was actually the edge of a lake. No, wait, not _a_ lake. _The_ lake. The most important lake. He sat and watched it without moving for several breaths and then swung down, leaving Willow to wander about the edge of the forest looking for tasty things while he went forward and stood at the shore, the tips of his boots just barely touching the water that lapped against the rocky sand in little wavelets.

…

Catching up was easier said than done. Leon was covered in thorns of various sizes and he didn't much like the idea of trying to ignore them for the rest of the day. When Arthur, K and Gwaine rode off he carefully peeled off his tunic and his shirt, which were both filled with pricking, painful little barbs. He put them over Lamrei's saddle and started picking thorns out of his trousers as best he could—but they seemed to be everywhere, even in his socks! He had no idea how to get the ones on his back out…

"Are you alright?"

Leon turned, and saw that Elaine, alone, had ridden up to where he now stood pulling thorns out of his backside. He colored deeply, and was flabbergasted to find his naked chest blooming red as well. _What is—? I don't even—!_

"I'm alright, thank you," Leon said, trying for the casual approach.

This did not seem to deter Elaine, who slid off her horse. As she did so Leon grabbed his shirt and not-so-nonchalantly held it in front of his blushing chest.

"Sir Elyan said you fell off your horse!"

"Hmm? Oh, yes. I did."

She pursed her lips. "Are you sure you're alright? You were riding a bit adventurously." But before Leon could explain she gasped. "You're covered in thorns!"

"I know," Leon said. He tried to pick one out of his arm but it was one of those small fiddly ones. "I sort of—fell in a thorn bush." The thorn broke off as he tried to pull it out.

"I've got some tweezers here," she said, unearthing a pair of silver forceps from her purse. "How did you fall? Turn around, I'll see if there's any on your back."

"Oh, it's really—"

But Leon hardly knew how to refuse anyone anything, especially a woman. At a touch of her hand he turned round and let her run her hands over his naked back. Occasionally he felt a little pinch as she pulled thorn after thorn out of his back and sides, while he just concentrated on keeping still. He didn't like it when women stood so close behind him. He didn't like the thought of them doing things back there. The last time someone did, it was Gwen, and he was wearing a dress. So he had reason to be uncomfortable. Also he was very ticklish.

_Keep calm_, he told himself, _She's just trying to be helpful. Don't get excited. _

He looked around to see if any of the other knights were within sight, but they had all continued with the hunt. It was down to him…and it was down to her.

As her fingers brushed against his spine he started thinking about that lovely little Elaine-centric dream again. Excitement, it seemed, would be difficult to stave off.

…

The lake was apparently not in the mood to do anything terribly magical today. It was still—as still as it ever got, anyway, so not quite still enough for a mirror, but still enough to reflect the forest around it. He crossed his arms and glared at it for awhile, and then snatched a flat rock up from the ground and flung it as if to skip the rock across the surface of the water. It plunked in without even making an honest effort at skipping, and he kicked the shore in frustration. What, exactly, had he been expecting when he'd done that? Someone to catch it? Like the stupid sword? Yeah, right.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and wandered a short distance to crouch on his heels and continue staring out at the unperturbed water. There was a log sunk into the water just in front and next to him, an old iron ring embedded in it for tying up boats. There was no boat to tie up, anymore, because he'd burned it. He'd burned it because Freya's body had been in it and that had seemed like the best way to handle things, so at least no one could find her body and connect it with the cat beast that had been terrorizing the city at the time. If that spell of his the other night had just _worked_!

There was a splash nearby and he looked up to see… that dolt horse wading into the lake with its tack on, which would probably ruin it and cause him endless amounts of work to put the leather back to rights. Annoyed at having his thoughts interrupted, Merlin stood and went after Willow, at first grumbling and then speaking louder and louder until he was half shouting.

"No, you _clotpole_, the shore is this way! Get out of there!" he practically wailed at Willow as he wandered further away, dropping his nose to drink water. Could he really not drink from the shore where it was dry? Was this whole hunting trip just some intricate plot to make his life difficult and obnoxious, or was he just having bad luck? "Fine! Stay in here, you stupid horse!" he said, throwing his arms into the air. He wasn't following the horse any further out. As it was, the water had him drenched to the waist, and his boots, which he'd not thought to take off, were most definitely ruined. He gave the recalcitrant and vaguely confused-looking Willow one last glare for effect and turned to slog back to shore.

And found there was someone in the way.

And realized he knew her.

"…_What?_" This was just _unfair_, this trick his mind was playing on him. He stared, mouth agape like a fish out of water.

"Merlin?" the mind trick asked, taking a step towards him.

"F—" he blinked, really hard, several times, rubbed his eyes, blinked some more, and then swallowed. "Freya?"

…

"Elaine?"

Elaine had stopped pulling spines out and was apparently just standing behind him.

Leon yelped as Elaine's fingers pressed into his side.

"Oh—Sorry!" Elaine said quickly. "Did I hurt you? I just thought you might have hurt a rib."

"It's fine!" Leon said, spinning around.

"You had the breath knocked out of you, I expect," she said. She had a determined look in her eyes that Leon had no intention of disobeying. "Sit down against that tree to get the stress off of it, at least."

"Perhaps I ought to return to Camelot," Leon said quickly.

"At least take a rest for a moment," she said, taking his hand. "You'll feel better for it."

Leon couldn't really think of an excuse. Anyway, he wanted to stay, and as a knight he'd never disobeyed a lady before. He thanked the Lord that at least he had gotten the spines out of his trousers.

"There. I'm sitting," he said, still trying for petulant. "God knows a knight cannot displease a lady—I am at your command."

She knelt beside him with a laugh. "You're funny!"

Leon bridled at that. He wasn't funny. No one thought he was that funny. Well, except for that troll the king accidentally married—she thought he was _hilaaaaarious_.

He tried to sit still, as Elaine talked on and wrapped a wound on his hand with a green ribbon from her purse. The touch of her hands on his was very distracting, and he was trying in vain to follow her train of thought when she suddenly put her hand out to his face.

Leon shied away. "What?"

"You've got a stick in your hair."

"Oh." He reached up to get rid of it, but it was stuck in a tangle. Elaine put her hands on his fingers, and gently took over at working the stick out of his hair. He could feel her fingers immersing themselves in his blonde curls. With him sitting and her kneeling they were about the same height, and he looked into her lovely eyes as they concentrated on a point about five inches up from his own eyes—she was looking completely in the wrong place!

At about that moment a very assertive voice inside of him said, _Time to take the field!...  
_  
"Stop squirming!"

"Sorry!" Leon said, and stopped trying to sit on his hands.

"Here, put your head down a bit," she said, indicating that he should adjust his posture such that he was looking down her dress.

_No! Society frowns upon this!_Leon screamed inside, as Elaine took hold of his very red ears and gently turned his head downwards. He scrunched his eyes shut as she fiddled with the tangle.

"Merlin says you need someone to look after you," she said.

"Did he?"

"Mm. A very perceptive fellow, Merlin. There!" Elaine said, finally getting the stick out of his hair. "Now, just—try to relax." She smiled disarmingly at him as her hand lingered for a moment on his head, then slowly drifted down to his beard. Her thumb gently touched his lips.

_Okay, this is personal space that I feel is being somewhat violated, here—even if she is nice and pretty and I like her and I can't disobey a lady. I think I'd better just carefully lean back and—_

But he had forgotten about the tree behind him, and the back of Leon's head gently hit bark as she leaned forward and kissed him.

…

Any second now, Merlin was sure he was going to wake up and this would disappear, the lake and the horse and everything, because that was what it always did. It wasn't that he had dreams about going back to the lake and finding Freya alive and well happened often, but he'd had enough of them to recognize them. And even though this was definitely missing something in that it'd started with a hunt… well, maybe he'd fallen asleep on his horse, or gotten knocked off when Willow took off through the forest. The second he moved, this would probably all fall apart, or Freya would disappear.

"Merlin, are you alright?" Freya asked, stepping toward him.

"I'm… dreaming?" he asked finally, when she stood about a foot in front of him. He could have reached out and touched her, but he was afraid if he did…

"I don't think I'm a dream. Also, there's a twig in your hair. What did you do, ride straight through the forest?" she asked. Which, admittedly, seemed like an odd thing for a dream to say. She reached up and stood on her toes to snag the twig from his hair, but unbalanced in the shallow water and tipped backwards. Without thinking, Merlin reached out and grabbed her hand before she could topple into the water and pulled her back to her feet.

"You're not a dream!" he said in surprise, looking down at their hands. The utter shock in his voice startled a laugh from Freya, but she just shook her head. "I don't understand. I thought it didn't work…" he said, brows knitting into his standard look of puppy-like confusion and bewilderment. She waited patiently while he talked to himself, or maybe her, some more and then abruptly stopped talking in favor of just staring at her.

"What didn't work?" she asked finally, because he didn't seem to realize he'd stopped talking. He shook his head as if to clear it and then shrugged one shoulder dismissively, as if what he'd done was actually no big deal.

"Er… a spell. I thought maybe you were just… trapped somewhere. And if you were just trapped, it was supposed to free you," he said, sort of half mumbling. She'd thought that might be the case, that a spell had hit her weeks ago and done this. It had been a shock suddenly finding herself well and truly aware of being in her own body, something of which she'd been only passing-aware for… she wasn't even sure how long. And it wasn't everyone in the world who could pull off such a spell, but she could think of at least one other than Merlin who could probably, if she wanted to, do such a thing. That would have been very bad. She didn't want to owe Morgana anything, not in this life or the next or anywhere in between.

"That would be about two weeks ago?" she asked off-handedly, just to make sure she was correct, and Merlin nodded. "Why did you think it didn't work?" she asked curiously, and he laughed, rolling his eyes and gesturing with the hand that still held hers.

"The whole castle started going mad, and I thought it'd worked on the castle, not on you, or I'd found the wrong spell. And then we thought it was the round table, and it wasn't, and then it turned out to be Lancelot's doing, on accident. And by then I didn't even want to think about it, because…" he shrugged. He'd avoided thinking about it because he just didn't feel like dealing with it, all of it, all over again. "Because I just didn't. But it worked! Are you okay? I mean… it didn't do anything to you, did it?" he asked, suddenly looking very concerned.

She smiled and shook her head. "No, nothing it wasn't supposed to. I'm fine," she said, and when he didn't look entirely convinced, added, "I am! At least I don't look like I rode straight through a hundred trees on the way here," she said, and reached up to gently touch a cut that some badly-placed branch had left just under his eye. He smiled a little hesitantly.

"I missed you," he said finally, when she stepped closer under pretense of getting a better look at the minor scrape. He didn't even feel it anymore, just a strange sort of buzz he belatedly realized was the result of a druid's minor healing spell. Freya didn't step back, but looked from the cut to catch his eyes. She met him halfway as he went to kiss her, and when they both stopped, albeit somewhat reluctantly, Freya just stood there and leaned on him with her head against his chest, while he concentrated on not ruining the moment by toppling over, which would have been a problem for both of them, as his arms were wrapped very protectively around her shoulders. "I missed you too, when I could think real thoughts," she answered after a minute. Merlin just grinned the sort of silly grin that any one of the knights definitely would have given him a seriously hard time over, had they seen it.

And then, as if on cue, one of the knights _did_ruin the perfect, absolutely peaceful moment but hollering a certain young warlock's name through the forest at the top of his kingly lungs. Both Merlin and Freya jumped, looking hurriedly over to the shore of the lake as if expecting Arthur to be right there—as if that wouldn't take explaining—and sighing in relief when he wasn't.

"MERLIN! Where did you go?" the voice hollered again, sounding annoyed. Merlin shook his head.

"I'm sorry, but if he finds you…" he said, and Freya waved a hand to cut him off. They both knew that wouldn't end well.

"You go, I'll be alright here. You don't want to annoy the prince," she said. Merlin laughed.

"The king, now. No, I don't. I'll be back though, I promise. As soon as I can. You're sure you'll be okay here?" he asked, half-turning already to trudge back to shore. Freya nodded and made a shooing motion at him, following him to the very edge of the water.

"I'm not entirely defenseless, remember," she said. He laughed and flailed around for Willow, who'd had enough of being out here all alone and was waiting none too patiently for his rider to come back so they could leave. As he dragged himself into the saddle, Merlin looked down and waved a silly little wave. "But… don't go anywhere, alright?" he said, afraid that as soon as he left this would all disappear as if it never happened.

"Merlin, when I find you, you better have a very good reason for not being here!" Arthur shouted, coming closer, and Freya gave the eager Willow a slap on the rump to send him off. His hooves splashed twice in the shallow water and then they were again on dry land. As they entered the forest, Merlin turned in the saddle and looked back, relieved to see that Freya was still standing there, one hand raised in a wave. Then the forest filled in behind him and he sent Willow at a gallop to go find Arthur before the king made a more determined effort to find him.


	9. Chapter 9

By rights, Leon should have been enjoying this. He loved being out in the forest, either riding or sitting against a tree like he was now, listening to the thrushes and robins and feeling the breeze ruffle his hair. He knew the forests so well that he could almost name every tree in Camelot. It was wonderful to feel the freedom of the wilderness around him-minstrels sang song after song about this sort of thing.

But he wasn't really thinking about any of that, because Lady Elaine was kissing him. It had been years since he touched lips with a woman, and she really kissed him very wonderfully, gently tickling his jaw line so that he'd open his mouth a little more and pressing her nose into his cheek. But he couldn't really pay attention to how much fun it was, either. He was arguing with the mysterious emotion that he didn't understand—that little insane but insistent force inside him. It seemed to be originating from his trousers.

_Yes! Yes!_ it shouted joyously, _At least one of you isn't botching it! Now that she's made the first move this will go much easier. Just put your hands up on her waist, let her know that we'll be taking it from here…._

_Taking what? Oh, no, we're not taking anything!_ his voice of reason exclaimed.

_Why not?_

_There is a right time and a right place for everything and THIS IS NOT IT._

_We're sitting on the ground, alone in the middle of a forest. You've got your shirt off, and she's kissing you. How is this not the right time? Trust me, this has 'pastoral scene' written all over it. Anyway, she's not objecting, is she?_

He cursed this force's use of logic, and noticed that she had stopped kissing him. She was looking at him expectantly. "Relaxed?" she asked.

"Erm," he said, swallowing hard. His words were getting re-routed somewhere on the way from his brain to his mouth. He pulled his knees up to his chest, hoping to disguise his arousal, but it only served to push Elaine closer to him.

"I think it is customary for the knight, once he has been given a kiss, to quickly claim another," she said as her hands moved back, immersing themselves in his hair. She didn't seem to be noticing his lower half at all.

"Erm." Leon felt short of breath, and drank in the smell of the forest and the scent of citrus on her hair. She just slowly brushed her fingers over his neck, sending a rush of pleasure through him. His eyes flitted from her soft eyes to her lovely lips as they drew closer.

His hands drifted upwards of their own accord, and he felt the fabric of her dress under his wandering fingertips.

Elaine's eyebrows shot up at his touch. What did he touch?

Leon turned bright red and finally managed to untangle his tongue.

"Sorry, sorry!" He flung himself away from her with such energy that his head knocked hard against the tree.

"Oh, no!" Elaine said as his head hit the tree. "Are you alright?"

Leon pushed her concerned hands away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't've—! I'm an idiot!"

Elaine blinked at him in confusion. "What? No, you're not! What's wrong?"

"Nothing!—I just remembered, er, some patents of nobility I have to see to, and I'd better get back to Camelot and get them finished—thank you for your assistance, but I'm sure the others aren't too far ahead, why don't you catch up with them?"

"What are you…? Now, wait a moment!—"

But Leon ignored Elaine's attempts to regain control of the situation and scrambled to his feet. He gave what could be construed in very impatient circles as a bow and, without another word, he jumped on his horse and rode as fast as he could back to Camelot. That emotion he didn't understand was coursing hot and fast through his veins, that fantasy replaying in his mind and insisting on his undivided attention. But it was painfully obvious now that he didn't understand it or know how to cope with it, and it made him so upset that he spurred Lamrei on even faster in an attempt to outrun its visceral throbbing.

Far behind his retreating horse's thundering hoorbeats, Elaine watched him go in contrastive silence and stillness.

Then she shouted "Oh—_shit_!" and kicked the tree.

…

"_Merlin, when I find you, you better have a very good reason for not being here!" _Arthur hollered into the trees.

"Aww, come off it, Princess," Gwaine said as he settled lazily back in his saddle. "He's probably gone off to take a leak and found a pretty bird or something. Heaven forbid you have to haul your own bloody deer."

Arthur glared at him. Gwaine grinned back. K laughed.

"Oh, for the love of—_I'll _do it," Gwaine groaned, sliding off Studly and slinging his reins around a tree.

"Sir Gwaine..." Arthur warned. Gwaine tried not to be obvious about his smirk. He absolutely _loved_doing things for himself that were not 'proper' for a knight to do, just to see Arthur get worked up about it. If Gwaine had his druthers, he'd generally much prefer the lazy option, but the funny, do-anything-to-annoy-Arthur option occasionally won out. For now he ignored Arthur and set to binding the hart's hooves together (which was hard, but not impossible with one and a half hands).

Then there was a crashing through the trees, and Pussy appeared. Gwaine leapt to his feet, beaming as the beast whinnied in terror and reared slightly to avoid crashing over him. When Merlin half-tumbled, half-scrambled out of the saddle, Gwaine was there to catch him. "Whoa, there!" He laughed, rounding out the catch with a manly embrace, clapping Merlin on the back. "You look like you've had the runaround!" he said, beginning to pick twigs out of his coat and hair as he quickly assessed Merlin. The kid looked fine: a bit breathless, maybe, but unhurt, though his eyes held...something he'd need more time to sort out when the whole world wasn't watching. But now, for the benefit of Arthur: "And _why_are you all wet? Did Pussy try to go for a swim?" Gwaine reached out to feel Pussy's saddle, which, of course, was damp. "Stupid beast. No apples for you tonight, shame on you for giving Merlin such a fright. I'll eat them in front of you, I will!"

"Gwaine! Stop talking," Arthur tried.

"Oh, Pussy's a well-meaning pony, but he just loves swimming so, and he often tries to get everyone else to enjoy it, as well. It's a good job you got him out, Merlin. Thank you."

Arthur rolled his eyes and waved his hand. "Oh, what_ever_," he sighed, clearly prepared to leave them to their own devices. "It's getting late, and I'm starved. Sir Gwaine, you're in charge of making sure that thing gets hauled in." And with that, the Princess rode off, with K and the other knights in tow, leaving Merlin and a few servants staring at each other.

"Well. All right, boys, let's get to it!" Gwaine said, relishing at how he was making some of the servants uncomfortable by his proximity to the labor needing to be done. "You lot check my knots, and get his antlers tied up. Merlin, let's go find us a pole."

After they were safely out of earshot, Gwaine turned to Merlin, suddenly much more interested in him than looking for any pole. "So what actually happened back there?" he asked with an inviting grin.

"Willow got scared by a pheasant, and he just took off on me. We ended up by the lake, the big one further into the forest. And then when I got off he decided he wanted to be in the water to drink it, and I had to go after him."

"That sounds suspiciously like the lie I just told Arthur," Gwaine grinned.

"He's your horse, you know how he is. Not a brave bone in his body. Right, Willow?" he said, patting the horse, who had followed them, probably afraid to be left alone with Studly and Nero and a bunch of strangers, on the neck. He wasn't a very bright horse, either. "He didn't want to come out of the lake, either, so I had to chase him around the shallows."

Gwaine nodded, backing off. He began to actually look around for what they were supposed to be finding: a suitably-sized tree. "So...that's Merlin-speak for 'I don't want to talk about it'?" He made sure Merlin couldn't see the half-guilty instigating look on his face as he said it. "Here, hand me the hatchet."

As he looked about briefly for the hatchet and then handed it to Gwaine, Merlin shrugged one shoulder. "That's Merlin for 'there's not much more to say about it'," he answered.

Gwaine smiled disarmingly as he turned back to face Merlin. He could practically smell the tension radiating off of his friend, but he had learned his lesson about How To _Un_successfully Interrogate A Merlin, so he didn't push the issue. "Well, you know, Merlin. If you ever _do _decide something happened that you want to talk about. I'm here."

With the help of the other servants, they quickly got the beast taken care of, and just as they were lifting the pole to sling between the two largest horses—Studly and Nero, whom Gwaine had brought along for just this occasion, who should ride up but Lady Elaine?

"Oh!" she said, looking around at the assembly of servants. "I was wondering...where the hunting party went? Oh, Sir Gwaine!" she brightened, spotting his familiar and rakishly handsome face.

"Milady," he bowed with a flourish. "I'd offer you my hand, but it's kind of covered in guts. Arthur and his party rode on ahead." He stopped, _almost_asked about Sir Leon, until he saw the barely-contained rage in her eyes, startled at it, and tried another question. Unlike some, Gwaine knew that servants were people, too, and he didn't want to talk about a potentially delicate subject in front of them. "You are welcome to ride back with us, if you do not mind the somewhat slowed pace," he waved, noting by the lack of horses that most of the party would be walking.

She dipped her head in acknowledgement. "Thank you."

The way back was silent for some time. Merlin wasn't in a talking mood. After a bit a few of the servants started up a few songs or talked amongst themselves, trying not to fraternize with the "nobility."

And Gwaine didn't like silence, as a rule, so he sidled up next to the Lady Elaine, on the side where her legs hung down, and gave her horse a friendly pat. "What's his name?"

"Oh...uhh, 'Champ' I think. My father's horse."

Gwaine nodded. "Seemed a bit big." He glanced sidelong up at her with a wicked grin, testing her to see what her reaction would be. "I suppose you like them big?" he said playfully, not referring to the horse at all.

"I do. But they don't seem to like me very much!" she grumbled.

"Ah. Not cooperating, is he?"

"Not to mention it took me ten minutes to get back on this bloody horse without anyone to help me!"

Gwaine laughed. "I apologize, milady. You know, you wouldn't think it, but the big ones tend to scare easier. Which doesn't mean they're not worth the extra effort..." he added, quickly.

Elaine gave a grin, biting her bottom lip. "Yes, that's true." Then, as if she remembered she was meant to be angry, she grumbled, "What is the matter with Leon? I thought everything was going nice, very pleasant, we were alone, low-pressure situation and everything, and what does he do? He goes running off to wash his damn turtle or whatever excuse he came up with." She blushed. "Sorry, I mean—_dashed _turtle."

"Oh, don't apologize," Gwaine replied huskily (he often had trouble turning the chat-up "off" even though he truly wasn't _actually_ trying to horn in on Leon's woman, though of course he wouldn't turn her down if given half, nay, a breath of a chance), "I like a woman who knows how to get angry." He shrugged, fixed her with a piercing glare belying the gravity of what he was trying to say. "He's madly in love with you, you know. That's _why_ he's so scared. I _know _it makes no sense," he added as she tried to jump in, "it's just...how his inbred little brain works! I think he thinks he'll...oh, hell, I don't know what he thinks! What I do know is we'll have to work together to solve this puzzle!" he grinned broadly at her, and wiggled his eyebrows playfully. "Any ideas?"

"Not unless you can get me a key to a closet so I can lock him inside with me," Elaine said with a guilty not-totally-joking laugh. She sighed. "You're his best friend. What do you think?"

Gwaine thought about this. "Well, I am the leading expert in wooing women, after all," he told her with a wink, "it shouldn't be _that _hard to flip it about and put my skills to use the other direction." While she laughed, Gwaine chewed on his lip, which ended up basically being him chewing on his beard, which was a gross reminder he needed to trim it.

"Aha!" he said, finally, and loudly, making the horse whinny in alarm until he quieted it with a pet on the jaw. "An old trick I once used on a Viking Ice Queen—and when I say Ice Queen I do mean she was frozen to the core. I wasn't getting anywhere with her with my usual arsenal, so I started talking to her really quietly." For dramatic effect, Gwaine lowered his voice from his usual boisterous projection to an almost-whisper. Elaine, without thinking, bent over to hear him. "And see!" he exploded loudly again, and she shot upright. "Except you don't do that part. He's worried about you getting to close to him? Make him come to you!"

Elaine giggled. "Ooh, that sounds nice!" she said, her own voice taking on a sultriness Gwaine couldn't help but be attracted to—in a strictly-business sort of way. "You are a clever man, Sir Gwaine."

"I have a broad range of knowledge, my lady," he said, with a mock-bow, "which are ever at your service. Especially when they are also in the service of my idiotic friend Sir Leon. Who, I might add, is going to the pub with us later this evening."

"Oh?"

"Oh, yes. Around eight 'o clock. He would have had his first and only beer by half-eight. Which is about the time I would be leaving my customary seat next to him to purchase my third, leaving that the only seat open." He nodded at her conspiratorially. "And you two can get some 'hey nonny nonny,' if you get my drift?"

She nodded back, barely containing her grin. "'Hey nonny nonny' indeed," she agreed.


	10. Chapter 10

Leon felt guilty about not actually having to see to any patents of nobility, so he punished himself by sitting inside all day getting other completely non-essential paperwork done. For the first time in years he actually finished early, and accompanied Gwaine to the Rising Sun. Thankfully, K arrived earlier and was on the other side of the tavern, so Leon was at least thankful that the topic of him getting unhorsed would not be brought up.

He ordered his usual pint and headed over to join Gwaine at the usual spot near the bar. He had hoped that Gwaine would choose somewhere a bit more private to sit this time, since he still needed to talk to Gwaine about those gnomes and didn't want the whole tavern to know it. He doubted whether there was a private spot in the whole tavern—it was full of people tonight, all celebrating Galehaut's recent knighthood. As Leon passed he handed Galehaut a set of new horseshoes that he bought for the occasion, glad to find that apparently everyone else was just hoping to get him slobbering drunk.

"Thank you, Sir Leon!" Galehaut said with a grin. "Would you like to join us? I'm going to teach Percival and Lancelot how to taste-test brandy!"

"I'll just watch tonight, thanks," Leon said, indicating the drink he already had in his hand and continuing to his usual seat.

"Elaine's here," Gwaine said as Leon sat down. He looked innocent enough except for the glint in his eye which told Leon that he (and probably everyone else) knew about his little tete-a-tete with Elaine earlier. Leon glanced over to see Elaine and Gwen standing at the other end of the bar talking and eating grapes. Although Gwen, more rugged than most women, was still wearing her riding clothes Elaine had changed out into a lovely frock of blue silk. It was extremely fashionable, and showed off more than her figure.

Gwaine elbowed him in the ribs. "'Ey, get a look at that dress! What do you think of that, eh?"

"I'm trying not to," Leon said, turning back to his drink.

Gwaine sighed but didn't press the matter, which Leon was very glad of, and to make certain that he didn't press the matter Leon changed the subject.

"I think we ought to tell Arthur that those gnome things could be dangerous."

"Well, I don't envy the man who does tell him," Gwaine said, laughing nervously. "He looks like he's more smitten with them than Gwen."

"But they're dangerous, aren't they? I mean, if they—_eat_noblemen, Arthur's about as noble as you can get for miles. His life may be in danger as we speak."

Leon looked to Gwaine to see if he would show the same nervousness he displayed earlier, but Gwaine didn't like to look scared, especially in public. He just shrugged elusively. "Eh, forget it. I'm sure just two of them aren't dangerous."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you wouldn't be in much danger if a squirrel took it into its head to kill you, would you? And gnomes sort of gain power the more you have of them. One or two can't do much besides give you a wink."

Leon wrinkled his brow, feeling better about the whole thing even though this was Gwaine supplying him with important information. But Gwaine would err on the side of caution in matters like these, right?

"Don't worry," Gwaine said, giving Leon a pat on the back that made him spill his beer. "Gwen thinks they're awful, anyway. In a few days she'll get fed up with them and they'll be quietly put in the rubbish bins."

…

No one would deny that Gwaine was selfish. But at the same time, he didn't do much thinking about himself (unless it was about his hair). He generally found other people-anyone other than himself, really-much more interesting topics for consideration. Also, he simply _needed _to distract himself from himself. If he turned introspective, he knew, _especially _after last night, it wouldn't lead to anything good. Gwaine didn't like being introspective.

So, for example, he noticed immediately when the Lady Elaine and the Queen entered together. At first he was surprised to see Gwen there without Arthur, but quickly realized that Elaine must have asked her out under the guise of "girl's night" but with the probable intent of something more along the lines of a wingman. Wingwoman? Elaine clearly thought like him, anyway. He raised his cider to her in a silent good-luck wish as he downed it in one gulp and made his way to the bar for another, leaving the seat next to Leon conspicuously empty.

It was Sir Galehaut's evening. Everyone was so pleased at him becoming a knight-he literally had _no _enemies in Camelot, the man was so precious-and if he rarely bought drinks anyway, he was certainly not buying any for himself tonight. The boys were congratulatory, the girls' attentions were chiefly on him (which made Gwaine's background mission a bit of a problem), but of course Galehaut only had eyes for...

Lancelot. Sir Oblivious. Gwaine couldn't decide who was the nicer man, really (although Lancelot's niceness tended to get on his nerves), so when either opened his mouth, only the most perceptive could tell the difference between the "Hi, how are you?" which stood for _Hello, person whose name I've forgotten, how are you?_ and the "Hi, how are you?" which meant roughly _Hi, how are you, want to have sex?_

Meanwhile, Lancelot was being perfectly shameful in his attentions to Gwen-and this was coming from_Gwaine_. It almost made Gwaine wish Arthur was there, and Gwaine hardly ever wished Arthur was there.

It was pathetic. Gwaine had actually began to root for Galehaut in earnest when the newest Knight of the Round Table gave up, extricated himself from the crowd, and headed toward the bar.

"Your technique was flawless, mate, I dunno what to tell you," Gwaine said, startling Galehaut as he sidled up next to him at the bar.

"Um. Sorry?" Galehaut tried, blushing adorably.

Gwaine smiled and jerked his head at Lancelot, who was too busy making eyes at Gwen to realize he was being stared at.

Galehaut sighed, and Gwaine ordered two more ciders, handing it off.

"Ta," Galehaut said, staring at the amber drink. "He...just might be the greatest knight in the world."

"Easily," Gwaine agreed, gulping at his cider. "I wouldn't give up hope."

"I don't believe I could, Sir Gwaine." Galehaut said, smiling sadly. And he was so beautiful and lonely and romantic and wistful, it made Gwaine's heart ache. He didn't feel sorry for Leon: he was his own worst enemy in the game of love. He didn't feel sorry for Lancelot: he was an idiot in love with a woman who happened to be married to his liege-lord.

Gwaine felt _incredibly _sorry for Galehaut.

Now, the downside to Gwaine's negotiable selflessness was that it made him stupid. If he was thinking more about others than himself (not for any truly noble selfless reasons, of course), he wasn't keeping himself in check so his selfishness tended to rear its ugly head at the most inopportune moments, which meant he basically acted without thinking. And, while he was too busy observing everyone else in the bar to notice himself, Gwaine might have lost count of exactly how many ciders he'd had past the usual five, and the sugar took the alcohol to his head a bit faster than ale normally did, and he maybe hadn't gotten around to ordering food yet.

And he had been horny since this morning.

"Well, if you decide you need help taking your mind off of him for the evening," Gwaine said huskily, "I've just remembered I haven't properly _congratulated _you on your knighthood."

It actually took Galehaut a moment to realize he had been propositioned. Long enough for Gwaine to think, first of all, that that wasn't a good sign, and second of all, what the hell had he just said? It wasn't that he hadn't ever bedded a man before-he wasn't a prude, after all!-but that sort of encounter (in his shockingly limited experience) usually happened on accident, and he didn't ever seek it out.

That damned introspection got him in the end, of course, so Gwaine did not realize he was under attack until it struck.

_SMACK!_

The sound of Galehaut's open hand striking Gwaine full in the face was heard by the entire bar, which immediately fell silent.

"Just because I am a sodomite," Galehaut growled low, suddenly dangerously close to Gwaine's face, seething with warning, "do not _dare_to presume that I am as much a harlot."

Galehaut then gathered his cloak and left.

Gwaine, stunned, held a hand up to his stinging cheek. The next few seconds were gearing up to be incredibly awkward indeed, had not Leon taken that moment to spit out an entire mouthful of beer all over Percival, and once Percival had stopped shouting and Leon had stopped choking, Leon, who was apparently even more oblivious than Lancelot, took that moment to blurt out-

"HE'S _GAY_?"


	11. Chapter 11

"Yes, Leon, he's gay," Percival said, wiping beer off his face with chagrin.

"Sorry, Percival," Leon said, reaching over to help clean off Percival's shirt as Elyan and Lancelot laughed heartily. "Barkeep, another ale for Percival!"

"I don't even know how you could have missed it," Percival continued, although he looked somewhat pacified at the prospect of a free drink. "Galehaut's been displaying all the signs since he stepped inside the castle!"

"Oh, and you're the expert, Sir Straight-as-an-arrow-made-of-birch?" Gwaine laughed. He sidled over and took a big drink of Percival's new ale.

"Well, I know none of you will believe me," Leon said, "but a lot of nobles act exactly like that. Honestly, Gwaine, what did you try that for?"

"If you don't try, how are you going to find out?" Gwaine said lustily, though his shrug was noncommittal.

Leon conceded the point with a laugh and a shake of his head, and saw Merlin heading across the bar with a half-pint of ale that he had filled a bit too much. "Merlin!" Leon called, indicating that open spots to sit down at their table. "How did Gaius like the pheasant you got?"

…

In all honesty, Merlin had been trying to forget about the poor pheasant. It had been so mangled after he'd accidentally shot it and Leon had killed it that Arthur had been more than happy to let him keep it rather than sending it to the kitchens. He'd taken it back and handed it off to Gaius with some mumbled explanation about what had happened, and then gone to sit in his room with the door shut so he could think. It had been a long day, so long that he was quite frankly overwhelmed by it, and it was going to give him a headache if he didn't sit down somewhere quiet and just deal with it.

Sir K and his various annoyances he quickly set aside, and even the debacle with the pheasant and the horses and Leon getting chucked into a bush. But his thoughts kept circling on back to Freya, until he was driving himself mad and, as he'd half expected, giving himself a headache. Freya was still alive, which he'd been easier able to believe when she was standing right there in front of him. He touched just under his eye where there should have been a cut, and wasn't. That definitely wasn't just his imagination. But what was he supposed to do now? He didn't want to just leave Freya out there alone at the lake, Druid or no Druid, even if she said it was alright. If she liked it out by the lake that much, he'd at least have liked to make her some sort of shelter, rather than leaving her to fend for herself. He couldn't just show up with her in Camelot, either, because even if he was careful about it and didn't let on that they'd been acquainted in the past, someone was bound to figure it out. Gwaine, for one, was simply too nosey to just let something like that slide, and Merlin really didn't want a repeat of their shouting match, which was what would happen if he tried to lie about Freya. He was a horrible liar, and he knew it.

Finally, after chasing his thoughts around for awhile, he gave up and just sat listening to Gaius crash around outside, probably making something edible out of the pheasant. It being the evening after a hunt, he was fairly certain the knights would be at the tavern, so after they'd eaten, he helped Gaius clean up and went down to the Rising Sun. He'd only just paid for his half pint of ale when he heard Leon shout at him over the crowd and wove his way through everyone else to drop in the seat next to the knight. He reddened slightly at mention of the pheasant.

"Oh, well, he was happy to see it. He made stew for dinner," Merlin answered. He also hadn't made any mention of the state of the bird before he'd cooked it, which Merlin appreciated. "I don't think he could have done much else with it, really," he added, and was then quiet for a minute while he stared somewhat blankly at the ale in front of him. His mind wandered off after Freya again, and he shook his head. It was time to think of something else. A riddle! That'd keep his mind off of things.

"Leon, you told me a riddle earlier, but I forgot it," he said.

"You forgot a riddle?" Leon asked in mild astonishment, but relented when Merlin just half-shrugged. "Well, it's been a long day.

_A serpent swam in a silver urn,  
A golden bird did in its mouth abide.  
The serpent drank the water, this in turn__  
killed the serpent, then the gold bird died._"

As he had earlier, Merlin thought hard for a few minutes, thinking up and then discarding answers until he thought he might have one. He was about to answer when a voice on his other side said, "Oh, that's easy. It's an oil lamp."

Merlin and Leon both turned to look at K as he stood smugly next to them, having walked up while Leon was telling the riddle. Both of them stared while K smiled brightly, pretending not to notice that he was being obnoxious. Finally Merlin cleared his throat and looked over K's shoulder, seeing Gwen and Elaine walking towards them. He raised a hand in a wave, realized this looked ridiculous, and stopped.

"Merlin! Leon!" Gwen said with a bright smile as she walked up, and then looked over at K. "Sir K," she said, the smile failing only slightly. She spared him only a momentary glance before looking back at Merlin.

"I have a question for you about those horrid gnomes Arthur has been picking up," she said, beckoning him a couple feet away from the bar where they could actually hear each other without shouting. It also left Merlin's seat next to Leon empty, and Elaine and Leon both without anyone else to talk to.

…

With his drink finished and K looking like he was about to bring up the horse incident, Leon thought it best to call it a night. That is, until Elaine, whose eye contact he had been avoiding religiously, turned and outright spoke to him.

"Hallo again!"

"Er—Good evening, my lady," he said, starting to stand.

"At ease, good sir knight," she said with a smile as she sat down in the narrow space on the bench next to him. "We're not in court or anything!"

_You really should leave,_Leon's voice of reason told himself, but there was room on the bench for both of them, and leaving the crowded tavern quickly would be quite difficult. Gwaine also chose this moment to lead K off toward the bar, shouting something about "tequila shots." He slowly sat back down, giving Elaine as much space as possible. At least the tavern was already too warm to allow his blush to show readily.

"Can I get you something to drink?" he asked.

"Oh, no thank you—I already ordered."

At that moment one of the barmaids put a pewter stein in front of Elaine. It was huge, and full to the brim with frothy beer.

"What is that?" he asked in astonishment.

"I, er, don't know, actually—it was on special tonight," she said, peering somewhat uncertainly at the beer, which nearly came level with her eyes.

"That must be worth two of these," Leon said, indicating his empty tankard.

"This is going to be an interesting evening, then!" she giggled. "Unless…?" She proffered the stein.

"Oh!—Of course," he said, and, after giving her one last look to make sure this was acceptable, took a big drink. It was a double white ale, slightly sweet and with more alcohol than he was used to in his usual porter. He gave the stein back to her and self-consciously wiped the froth out of his beard, but she just smiled and took a sip of beer from the opposite side of the stein.

Leon was trying to think of something to say, somewhat distracted by Elaine's tongue as she licked froth off her lips. She said something that he didn't catch over the din of the tavern.

"Pardon?" he said, leaning down closer.

"Was that your new crossbow I saw you using today?"

"Oh—yes, it's a double-action repeating crossbow with composite lath, a recovery spanning lever…"_Well, that was a boring thing to say…._

"A spanning lever! Those are difficult to come by, aren't they?"

_That's your cue to stop talking about crossbows._"Yes, it's difficult to give the secondary arrows the same level of stability." He took another drink of the ale to stop himself from saying anything else.

She said something else, just as Gwaine shouted for more shots.

"Sorry?" He edged closer to her. Her lemon perfume certainly smelled better than the stale tavern air.

"I said I tried to get one but I could never get the second arrow adjusted right. I always thought yew would be more substantial than other woods."

Leon blinked, then laughed nervously.

"What?" she asked.

"It's just—I thought I was boring you."

She laughed. "I like talking about weapons—it's about all my father and I talk about. Unless you'd prefer to talk about something like _King Horn_?"

"The ballad of _King Horn_?"

"You've heard of it?"

"It's the most popular ballad series' in Albion—of course, I love it!"

She raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know knights liked romances."

"It's—its not a romance! It's an epic!"

"Really? What did you think of Horn dressed as the palmer?"

"Well, that was a bit too far to prove his point, but he was only trying to see if Rymenhild still loved— okay, fine, it's a romance. It's still very good."

She giggled, and Leon, finding his arm to be inconveniently in the way of their ability to converse in the loud tavern, put it behind her. And Elaine was so good at carrying on conversation that as soon as they got on the subject of epic ballads—okay, romantic ballads— they and the knights nearby were all involved in lively discussion over it. Even some of the less-schooled knights like Lancelot and Percival became interested. With how quietly she talked it was several minutes before Leon realized that she was practically in his arms. She didn't usually talk this quietly, but then maybe she was just as nervous about the awkward afternoon as well—or maybe the drink was getting to him more than he thought, because when she addressed the other knights she spoke loudly enough.

He still didn't know how to apologize for how he behaved in the forest, so when she was ready to go he just nodded to her and walked back to his room alone. Talking to a lady in public was one thing—making up for a debacle like that afternoon would take a little bit more clever planning.

He only hoped Elaine was up to the challenge.


	12. Chapter 12

As Merlin stepped away to talk to Gwen, and Elaine slipped into his seat with the practiced ease of a plan well-made, he began to suspect that possibly Gwen had just been trying to get him to move out of the way. He didn't mind being part of that particular plan, because anyone who hadn't noticed the looks Leon had been sending Elaine's way recently was either blind or stupid, or simply very unobservant. Coincidentally, he didn't think Arthur had noticed...

But Gwen also looked genuinely stressed about the gnomes, so once they were far enough away not to disturb the awkward couple at the table, he looked at her for an explanation.

"Thank you for not making that difficult," she said with a slight laugh, looking over at Leon and Elaine, who were deep in conversation about something.

"I didn't know what you were up to, but I don't mind. What about the gnomes?" he asked, and the smile faltered and she shook her head in frustration.

"He just keeps bringing more of them home! They're all over the sitting room now, and he has them guarding the outer door," she said quickly.

"Where in the world is he getting them from?" Merlin asked somewhat rhetorically, and Gwen waved a dismissive hand. "Well, I imagine he'll grow tired of them soon. And they're not hurting anyone, at least. I'd say I could sneak some out when I bring breakfast tomorrow, but..." he trailed off, not wanting to malign the king's cousin in front of the king's wife. He was surprised when Gwen's slight frown turned into a very real scowl and almost a glare in the direction of K and Gwaine.

"Oh, Sir K. I'm sure he's so very proud of himself for starting this nonsense," she said, and then snapped out of it and looked back at Merlin with a smile. "But there's nothing to be done about it right now, I suppose. If you get the chance, please feel free to remove one...or five. Thank you, Merlin," she said, and left to go speak with the other knights, who were not yet so very drunk as to be incomprehensible.

Merlin looked around, at a loss for where to go or what to do. He eventually wandered over to Percival and Elyan, looking absently for the only other unaccounted-for knight, Lancelot, as he sat down.

"Enjoy the hunt, Merlin?" Percival asked, clearly joking by the huge grin on his face, and Merlin rolled his eyes. "Oh yes, every second of it, thanks for asking," he answered brightly, "Is Lancelot around?" Elyan snorted a laugh.

"Oh, he's outside talking to some girl, I saw them leaving just about five minutes ago," he said, pointing back over his shoulder with a thumb. At that moment, the door slammed open and a very angry young woman came storming inside and sat down at the bar with a scowl. "Oops, looks like our Lancelot has done it again," Elyan commented dryly. "D'you remember how long he'd been with that one, Perce?" he asked, and the other knight shrugged. "Well, looks like it's over now, anyway," Elyan said with a sympathetic shake of his head. And indeed it did, since Lancelot never showed up to sweet-talk the young woman into forgiving him.

…

"Nine days," Gwaine said, who kept track of this sort of thing.

"What?"

"They've been together nine days," he repeated, never letting his eyes wander from the maiden. Her name was Elaine-only the second-most popular name around these parts-and she was dark, petite, and generally easygoing: much like the Guinevere she was meant to replace.

Her easy demeanor had limits, of course (unlike Gwen, whose niceness Gwaine suspected had no bounds, though he'd yet to really test it). The young woman was fuming. Probably Lance _had _called her "Gwen" or something, to get her this upset. Moron.

Gwaine finished his beer with a finality that had Percival raising his eyebrows. "What're you up to?" he asked in a knowing-but-dreading-the-answer kind of way.

Gwaine flashed him a smile. "Going to comfort the poor girl, of course. Lance is a brute and an idiot."

Elyan rolled his eyes. Percival frowned, giving him a disappointed look that was a shadow of what Leon would give him if he hadn't left early as usual. "Don't take advantage of her!" he hissed.

Gwaine laughed. "Oh, if only I was as irresistible as you think me! Unfortunately, I in fact have no magic powers which charm anyone I please into my bed, and must make do with consenting adults. Or did you _not _see the embarrassing debacle with Sir Galehaut?"

Percival and Elyan laughed to be so reminded. "Haha, fine," Percival said.

"And I can't exactly take care of the _problem _myself, what with being right-handed and all," Gwaine went on, too far, as usual, as he waved his injured right hand aloft as evidence.

It didn't take a genius to see what Gwaine was naughtily implying, and Percival practically died of embarrassment. "Okay, aaaand you're gone," Elyan said, waving his arm dismissively. "Happy hunting, I guess."

"Nah, I've had enough of hunting for one day. I'm rather in the mood to _be _hunted, actually..." Gwaine said, licking his lips and relishing in the groans and blushes he left behind him.

"Can I buy you a drink?" he asked, leaning heavily on the bar.

"Can you buy me several?" she said, glowering at her nails.

"You bet," Gwaine said, flagging down the bartender. "What're you having?"

"Something to help me forget."

Gwaine saw his opening, and smiled broadly.

He leaned in to whisper the not-quite-magic words in her ear.

She giggled.

They left their drinks, unfinished, at the bar.


	13. Chapter 13

Gwen woke up to the sound of something tapping against the bedchamber window. She listened to it for a while, trying to figure out what it was, until she heard smashing glass. She sat bolt upright, but no one was there. A stone, not much bigger than a large pebble, lay amongst the smashed glass. She heard a voice down below in the courtyard:  
_  
"Sorry, sorry!"_

Gwen sighed. That voice was all too familiar.

"Alright, dear?" Arthur, who had been sleeping like a log after she put him to bed, mumbled this half-muffled request for assurance into his pillow.

"Yes, go back to sleep," she said soothingly, though she was pretty sure he fell asleep before she even replied.

She was still naked, and so quickly pulled on a nearby robe and slippers before she ventured toward the broken window.

Lancelot was standing below. Well, standing was a too kind choice of wording. He was swaying on the spot like a tree in the wind.

"What are you doing, Lancelot?" she asked with a nervous smile.

"Guinevere!" he said, looking guilty. "I—sorry, I was throwing pebbles. I might have gotten one that was a bit too large," he said. "May I repair it tomorrow? Oh, and is Arthur there?"

"He's asleep," Gwen said, her grin becoming more and more forced.

"Oh! Did I wake you? I'm sorry—I just had another poem for you."

Gwen slowly buried her head in her hand. "Lancelot…"

"…and since I wasn't sure if you got the others that I've left under your door, and just in case Merlin hasn't yet given you the other ones, I thought I might read you one now." He cleared his throat. "_My lady deigned to kiss me, and in her mouth there seemed a little censer of gold, and therewithal there was such a savour as all the spicery of the world had been there—_"

"Don't!" Gwen hissed urgently before he could continue.

Lancelot blinked at her like a depressed puppy. "Do you not like it?"

Gwen bit her lips and clenched her fists to keep herself from jumping off the balcony so she could strangle him. She forced another smile and said. "Hold on, I'm coming down, alright?"

She took a bit of time (though not very much, in case Lancelot decided to throw more rocks at her window) to get a more substantial robe on, and quickly slipped downstairs. She wasn't exactly surprised that Lancelot was at her window, but that didn't make her any happier. Really, he was a grown man…

The guards gave her quizzical looks, and she looked them both up and down. She knew both of them from when she was a servant—Alfred was a gossiper and frequent tavern patron, while Cedric was trustworthy and liked by Leon, a real locked-box.

"Alfred, would you mind coming with me for a minute?" she asked.

Alfred agreed readily and followed her to the door to the courtyard.

"Alright, I want you to wait here. I'm just going to go talk to Lancelot for a minute, alright?"

"Sure, Gwen—I mean, your highness," Alfred said, already practically bursting with excitement about what he was about to hear. "Mum's the word."

Gwen nodded and walked out into the courtyard, assured that the impending conversation would be repeated all over the castle by lunchtime. She wasn't worried, of course—Lancelot was practically an angel—but it was always prudent to have witnesses when you had to leave your husband's bedchamber to go meet an attractive, single man in the middle of the night. And it would be better to have Alfred repeat exactly what was said rather than have rumors about what happened get spread around.

But as she approached, she couldn't help but feel her irritation fading. Lancelot looked handsome when drunk, but he looked handsome in any state of being. He also looked handsome when he was depressed, even more so when he was trying to hide his distress. When he saw her his eyes lit up a little.

"Shouldn't you be reading poems to Elain?" she asked, hopefully. "I mean, every relationship has rough patches, and I'm sure you could work through it…."

"I…broke it off," he said.

"Oh." Damn. Gwen had high hopes for Elain.

"I just don't know what to do, Gwen," he said, running his hand through his hair. "I've become a ship without moorings. I'm helpless—useless."

"You know that you're neither of those things," she said, knowing a man who wanted sympathy and comfort when she saw one. "Where's that lovely smile you gave me when we first met?"

She stroked his cheek and he smiled a little, and Gwen blushed to see a tear fall down his cheek. He looked away, his willing mind trying to control the emotion he showed.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm—you should get back to Arthur."

"Lancelot, you are too good, and too humble to realize your goodness. Any woman would be lucky to have you as her lover. You are the best knight I have ever known—the best knight that anyone has ever known—"

"Except that I'm in love with another man's wife."

And of course, that was Lancelot's only fault. He sang, he wrote, he fought, he even ate with complete perfection, and with a too-humble heart that only endeared people to him. He just fell in love, with _her_! Part of her knew that she didn't deserve his love! But then, she was too humble, too. She took his hand. "Lancelot, you can't go on like this. It's tearing you apart. I love you as a friend, I truly do. But do not pine for something more. It would break Arthur's heart if he knew—"

"I'm not—I'm not asking you to hurt Arthur—not at all," Lancelot said quickly, as if he never contemplated that such a thing could arise. "Your devotion need not be split between him and me."

"Then what do you want?"

He suddenly turned his eyes on her, and gazed at her with all the love she knew he could possess. "Let me love you, in any way that I can. Give me ways to love you—help you down from your horse, run errands for you, serve you. Little, insignificant ways. Anything you want from me, I will do with thanks. Every task will be a moment of pleasure to cherish in memory to the end of my life. Just—just thinking about you gives me peace. For so starving is my love for you that it will gladly survive on scraps."

Gwen was about ready to cry. Arthur, bless him, never spoke so eloquently, so deeply of his feelings. Many a lonely night before she loved Arthur she had dreamed of such a brave, kind, intelligent man who spoke of his love with such ardent conviction. Had she fallen in love with the wrong man?—No, of course not. In her heart of hearts she knew that for all of Arthur's little faults, there was no contest between him and Lancelot. Arthur was the only man she wanted, the only man she needed by her side for the rest of her life. That was what was so tragic.

She let her silence speak for her, and Lancelot sniffed, as if only now realizing how drunk he was. "Anyway. I just wanted to let you know that." He kissed her hand gently. "I could never love another woman like I love you. Not if I lived a thousand years."

Gwen returned to her room a few minutes later, not feeling as if she did very much to help.

She noticed that Arthur had left his gnomes (he had about a dozen in the bedroom alone) all on the floor by his side of the bed. She seemed to remember putting them on the shelf on the other side of the room so she wouldn't have to look at them while she was sleeping. What was odd was that Arthur had arranged them in a circle around his side of the bed, with one looking right at anyone who happened to enter, so that it looked like they had been interrupted in the middle of a gnome meeting or something. The fact that Arthur set them up like that was the only reason it made her smile, because they were very creepy to look at-especially the one that was staring at her with cold ceramic eyes. But she welcomed the ability to do something and so didn't question it.

She busied herself with putting them back on the shelf, then lay awake for a long time, running her fingers through Arthur's hair to comfort herself. She had to do something for Lancelot—he was her friend, as dear a friend to her as Merlin or Leon. He was too good to be unhappy for even a moment. No matter what anyone else would say, she owed it to him to find another object for his affections, someone else to make him happy…but how could he ever be happy if he truly convinced himself that he could love no one else like he loved her….

She fell asleep turning these thoughts over in her mind, and in the morning she woke up much more pleasantly than she did before. Arthur was kissing her bare shoulder, and as she turned to look at him he gazed on her with—well it was a different kind of love than Lancelot had in his eyes. It was almost disbelieving. She stroked his cheek and they kissed for a few minutes.

"How did I get so lucky as to have you wake up next to me every morning?" he said.

"I'm the lucky one, your Highness," Gwen giggled, blushing.

"You know that's not true." He stared at her again, his pretty blue eyes fixed on her as he stroked her hair. "You make me aspire to be better than I am."

And there in a nutshell was the difference. Gwen only inspired Lancelot, and gave him something to just dream about. Lancelot didn't need her to be better. But Arthur—Gwen made a difference with Arthur, motivated him to do better.

It took a while but Arthur finally got up to get dressed.

"Arthur?" Gwen called from the bed.

"Yes, angel?"

"Lancelot came by last night, while you were asleep."

There was silence from behind the screen. He poked his head around. "He's still pining for you, is he?"

She nodded.

He sighed and got back behind the changing screen with a "Poor man. Perhaps a year of questing would sort him out. Get him out of the castle, that sort of thing. There's this questing beast I could send him after."

Gwen shrugged. "Maybe. He said that he could never love another _woman..."_


	14. Chapter 14

Rather than staying at the tavern and trying to make conversation he didn't feel like having, Merlin wandered home early, walking slowly so he could think. It turned out walking didn't really help him think much, but it had been worth a try. When he got back, Gaius was already long asleep, snoring loudly as usual, which actually made Merlin grin. No matter what sort of crisis was going on, in his own world or Camelot in general, Gaius tended to not have too much trouble sleeping. And he always, always snored. Even the door to Merlin's room couldn't keep the sound out, but he'd become accustomed to it years ago, and it didn't keep him awake anymore, unless he was already having trouble sleeping to begin with.

Tonight, he knew, it would be pointless altogether to even bother trying to sleep, the mood he was in. So he sat cross-legged on his bed and flipped idly through a spell book until he found the spell he'd brought Freya back with. It, of course, gave him no further guidance on how to deal with the situation. He supposed there weren't a lot of instructions for that sort of thing. It probably didn't happen very often.

If he was honest with himself, he'd really have been happier if she was somewhere where he wasn't this far away, on the off chance she got into trouble again. It was true she was powerful in her own right, and the druids did tend to have their ways of looking after their own, but that still felt like leaving things to chance. They might not even know she was there, after all, since they weren't looking for her. He still wasn't clear on how that worked. Maybe he should just ask her. There was no reason he needed to figure it all out himself, with her there to do her own thinking. And if she didn't want to be anywhere near Camelot, he wouldn't blame her. He didn't think he'd care much for Camelot, if he were her. It might have made vast improvements since Arthur had become king, but the last time she'd experienced it, nothing had ended well.

With a sigh of frustration, he shut the book and considered trying to sleep anyway, even though Gaius was still snoring in the main room and it was probably a hopeless venture. He'd just about decided anything was better than sitting awake thinking in endless circles when he heard a sound outside his window. A very familiar sound of footfalls, and by now he recognized the sound of the footfalls, too. They weren't even attempting to be quiet.

"Pssst, Merlin!" Gwaine hissed outside the window, and Merlin unfolded and stood to go to the outer door. When he opened it, Gwaine was still standing over by his window, apparently waiting for an answer. He didn't actually look as drunk as he usually did coming back from the tavern this late.

"Gwaine!" Merlin said to get his friend's attention, and waved him in the open door. They managed not to take out half the tables or any chairs or even a single glass bottle getting back across the main room, and Merlin managed to beat Gwaine through his door so he could go sit on the bed again before Gwaine could claim it. Then he gave the knight a look.

"Where have you been?" he asked, and Gwaine grinned.

"At the tavern! You don't remember? Did you drink too much, Merlin?" he asked admonishingly, but Merlin wasn't being taken in by that silliness. He only frowned.

"_Where _at the tavern? The others came back forever ago, I heard them," he said, already anticipating the answer.

"Up...stairs?" Gwaine asked. He wasn't even trying to look repentant. He _was_eyeing a corner of Merlin's bed like he was tired of standing around and wanted to sit down.

"Oh no you don't. This is my bed. You can't just steal it every time you're out late!" Merlin practically whined, stretching out one leg so there was no room for Gwaine to sit. The knight tried to look wounded, and when that didn't work, resorted to another tactic.

"I promise I won't steal it!" he replied.

"No!" Merlin answered, getting a little frustrated. Had Gwaine shown up just to give him a hard time?

"Why nooooot?" Oh goodness, not the whining.

"Because you'll steal it!" he squeaked, and added in a rebellious mutter, "And also because you smell bad," which of course only made the growing grin on Gwaine's face turn into a laugh. Merlin was about to throw something at him for being obnoxious when Gwaine finally stopped and settled for sitting on the floor. Merlin was still scowling, completely unamused at the teasing, so it was Gwaine who finally broke the silence. It was usually Gwaine who broke the silence.

"So what were you doing, this late? Early? What time is it?" Gwaine asked, listening as if the tower clock would ring suddenly.

"Four. I was thinking," Merlin answered.

"You were thinking? At _four_in the morning? No wonder you can't get a girlfriend, mate," Gwaine said. Merlin flashed a quick grin, but then made his thinking face and the smile dropped right off.

"About that..." he started, and Gwaine snorted.

"Horses don't count, Merlin," he answered, apparently in rare form as far as bothering Merlin went.

"That's not what I meant!" Merlin yelped, and when Gwaine arched his eyebrows at him in that oh-really look, just scowled back at him. Perhaps sensing (correctly) that Merlin was very seriously trying to talk to him about something, Gwaine cleared his throat and stopped with the jester's grin.

"Sorry," he said, and waited a minute for Merlin to stop glaring at him. "Now what's this about a girl? Arthur's already married, you know," he asked after a minute had passed, still incapable of being entirely serious. Merlin actually snorted and then laughed.

"Haha. Were you here when that giant angry flying cat monster was attacking Camelot?" he asked.

"I have never been so drunk that I would have missed something like _that_," he answered, and then added, "Also... I didn't know you were into that sort of thing. And you say I'm dirty." Merlin actually did look angry at this, and chucked a shoe at Gwaine's head, which Gwaine ducked.

"If you don't shut up, I'm never telling you anything again," he snapped. Gwaine held his hands up as if to fend off further attack by shoe.

"Ok, ok, shutting up."

"...Thanks. Anyway, the cat monster wasn't a cat. She was this druid girl who'd been cursed, and she was really quite nice. And kind, and sweet-hearted," he said, maybe drifting off a little.

"You have a thing for strays, don't you?" Gwaine asked, and when Merlin looked up as if to snap off a retort, added, "No, I'm serious." Merlin thought about it, and decided that yes, if the people he was fondest of were any indication, he probably did have a thing for strays. But he waved it off with an absent hand.

"Maybe. Anyway, she _was_really nice. Some guy had... taken her prisoner or something. I don't even remember what he was going to do to her, but it wasn't going to be anything nice, and if Uther'd ever found out about her..." he said, and shrugged.

"Good thing Uther's gone now, huh? Kidding, just kidding," Gwaine added hurriedly. "Where is she now? And how does Arthur feel about you having a girlfriend?" Merlin frowned, his eyebrows knit, and he actually looked beyond sad for just a split second before he explained.

"I thought the knights had killed her. I mean... I watched her die, and then I buried her. At the lake," he said quietly. Whether she was back or not, you didn't just get over that kind of thing, and he still didn't really want to talk about it. Gwaine was noticeably silent, and Merlin went on. "But then I kept seeing her in the lake or in water from the lake, and I thought she might not actually be dead. That spell you helped me find, it was to fix whatever was wrong, if it was just that she was... trapped somewhere. It wouldn't have brought her back if she was dead, but if she wasn't... And then when Willow ran to the lake the today I had to go out after him, and when I turned around to go back to shore, she was standing right there. I didn't even think she was real," he admitted, and shook his head. Absently, he touched his face again where the tree had hit him, proof that Freya was actually real. "But Arthur doesn't know. He can't, because it would just get me in trouble, and her, even if she wasn't dead. She was just in some sort of limbo, I guess." He looked up from where he'd been looking at his hands to see that Gwaine was watching him.

"Don't worry about me. I like lying to Arthur, and I like seeing you happy, so I won't tell," he said reassuringly. "So you just... left her at the lake? Because she maybe shouldn't be somewhere she can hurt people..." he said almost hesitantly. Merlin shrugged one shoulder.

"She's still at the lake. But she didn't mention turning into a cat monster, which is important enough I think she would have said something, although I did kind of forget to ask. Anyway, she's probably less of a threat out there than anywhere else. Things didn't work out so very well last time she was in Camelot. For anybody," he answered.

"Well, lake houses are kind of romantic, she might like it. Dunno how long I could cover for you, though. Princess might take it amiss if you're not at his beck and call," Gwaine said.

"I was hoping his cousin would distract him while he's here, but he might just make double the work. I'm already taking care of his poor horse. I just hope he didn't bring a whole lot of armor to polish," Merlin said, "And anyway, they have to sleep sometime. I can't just leave her out there all alone all the time."

"Oh. Um. Well, use your magic, you know. And I'll talk to K, I'm sure he's fine. Anyway, I'll figure out something. Like I said, lying to Arthur is fun. Is that all that was worrying you this whole time?" he asked, and Merlin realized that yes, sort of, it was. If he could even get some time to go see Freya and talk to her about this whole thing, it would help.

"Actually... yes, I guess so," he answered. Gwaine yawned then, and stood to go.

"Then you should probably get some sleep, if Princess is going to be running you ragged. I'll see you at training," he said, stretched, and Merlin followed him to the door.

"Er... thank you," he said as Gwaine turned to leave, and Gwaine flashed that grin at him.

"Friends, right? Don't worry about it. Now go sleep," he said, and wandered off toward the knights' quarters.


	15. Chapter 15

Gwaine was not a thinker.

He was, actually, quite proud of this. He was a man of action! Thinking was for women. He didn't ponder. Musing was dangerous. He didn't plan to see tomorrow or brood much about anything really. So he tried not to consider the gravity of what he half-remembered Merlin telling him that night, about a possibly dangerous resurrected girlfriend and lying to Arthur. Merlin would let him know when it was time to _do _something. That was what he was best at.

But, if Gwaine ever _did _think about anything, it was about pranks.

So, it might be better to say that Gwaine did not _think_: he _plotted_.

He let Merlin revel in his victory for a few days, let him think Gwaine had forgotten about the rascal magicking his shoes to be too big for his feet. Gwaine even, he suspected, lulled the warlock servant into a false sense of security.

Which made what he was about to do almost criminal. It was too easy. Too gloriously, hilariously, irrevocably easy.

Prank Wars were really only fun when opponents were evenly matched. Merlin's magic gave him such an edge over Gwaine it was shocking. A successful prank for him was as easy as making his eyes flash gold to snake a bit of rope around his foot when he wasn't looking, or whispering magic words to make his beer taste like bathwater.

All this _almost _put him on par with Gwaine, Second Prince of Pranksters. Because, Gwaine pranking anyone else just wasn't fair. It was cruel and unusual. Like a baby dear fighting a dragon. But: give the baby deer magic powers and, well, suddenly it doesn't look too one-sided anymore, and you may even get maybe 1 to 10 odds if the house is playing fair.

"Morning, Gaius," Gwaine said, tipping a nonexistant hat at the physician as he left his quarters.

"Good afternoon, Sir Gwaine. How is that hand?"

"Oh, it's fine. "May even be able to torture the lute a little tonight, maybe."

Gaius scowled.

"...Or, you know, maybe I'll let it rest another week."

"A wise choice," Gaius said, nodded, and was on his way.

Gwaine set to work quickly. He upturned a barrel, stepped on a ledge, and swung into the rafters just above the door of the apothecary. It was almost noon, and Merlin would have just finished mucking out Arthur's stables. Any moment he would rush out to bring Arthur his lunch, having cleaned up and—probably, hopefully—put on his favorite purple shirt for the evening at the tavern later on. And Saturday was laundry day, so he wasn't likely to have anything clean left. So this bucket of flour that was going to tip over on top of him when Merlin opened the door—in _public_, where people could _see _him if he tried to magic his clothes clean again—was going to stay there.

He heard commotion inside, and quickly finished securing the bucket on its hinge—it wouldn't do to _murder _Merlin by dropping the whole bucket on his head, of course—and at the last possible moment, swung back and rolled onto the roof. He froze, for a second, and waited there for the trap to work.

The door opened, was flung wide, and what was probably going to be a mad dash ended up with a **_floosh! _**and a mad shriek. And a cough.

"What the—what is this—I don't even—?" Merlin spluttered. Gwaine would have sold his soul to have seen it. Instead, he rolled casually off the roof on the other side and, whistling, walked around the corner.

"Oh, hello, Merl—Merlin! Why what's happened to you? You're all covered in—"

It took Merlin all of two seconds to go from surprised and confused to suddenly _very aware of what had just transpired _and positively, helplessly fuming.

"GWAINE," he almost-not-quite shouted, as Gwaine couldn't help it anymore, and burst into laughter.

"What can I say? Gotta love the classics."

"GWAINE SERIOUSLY. Gwaine, this—this is my only clean shirt left!"

Gwaine stopped laughing, but couldn't dredge up the decency to even look sorry. "I know."

"I—ugh—I have to go feed Arthur like right now!"

"I know."

"Gwaine. Gwaine you have really—I'm going to—" Merlin was never very good at threatening, though, so the promise fell short. "Ugh!" he grunted, frustrated, as he tried to dust himself off as much as possible, but the white greyed his beautiful dark hair and faded his favorite purple shirt until he looked like a disgruntled old man who had forgotten himself in a dusty library for 80 years.

And Gwaine couldn't help but laugh again.

"I will get you for this, Gwaine!" Merlin shouted, shaking his fist as he ran off.

Gwaine chuckled a bit to himself as, jumping, he was just able to grab the bucket from where it hung. He whistled to himself as he shook out the remains of the flour, knocking the bucket against his boot, and checked to make sure Merlin had actually remembered to shut the apothecary door properly. He stopped whistling just long enough to chuckle at Merlin's retreating form and, "Bring it on," he said under his breath.

...

Merlin was still covered in flour, despite all his best attempts at shaking it off. Leave it to Gwaine to get the shirt absolutely, horribly flour covered, knowing good and well it was his last shirt by the end of the week, and his favorite besides. Come to think of it, that was probably exactly why Gwaine had chosen today, of all days. And he was going to be too busy to magic the flour off any time soon. He sighed. Arthur was going to find this hilarious all out of proportion. At least the flour hadn't dumped on Arthur's food, which he grabbed from the kitchens on his way to the king's rooms.

He did at least manage to get most of the flour out of his hair and off his face—and onto his flour-covered sleeve—before he opened the door to Arthur's chambers. Leon was standing there too, which really only made this that much more embarrassing. He supposed he should be glad none of the other knights were there. Before anyone could say anything (or he could be tempted to hurl the food at a particular monarch's face) he set the plate of food down on table just inside the door, and then looked at Leon and Arthur as if nothing was amiss. The effect was somewhat ruined when flour from his hair made him sneeze, resulting in a whole cloud of the stuff drifting gently to resettle on his clothes and on the floor.

"Ah, Merlin—MERLIN?!" Arthur jumped back dramatically, while Leon visibly bridled at the flour-covered Merlin. "A-are you a gh-gh-gh-ghost?"

Merlin forced a smile as Arthur laughed heartily at his own joke. "It was just—flour beetles—they were in the oatmeal and I had to—"

"Oh, come ON, Merlin," Arthur laughed, giving him a pat on the back that sent little clouds of flour into the air. "Flour over the door? That's about as traditional a prank as you can get! Judging by the excellent coverage I'd say you were gotten by an expert."

"Are you in a prank war with Gwaine?" Leon asked in a scolding tone.

"Oh, Merlin—you fell victim to one of the classic blunders!" Arthur said, enjoying himself. "The first rule is 'NEVER get involved in a prank war with Gwaine!'"

Merlin snorted angrily, causing another puff of flour to drift off him. Leon expertly turned his laugh into a cough.

"Well, your lunch is over there, so I'm just going to go—" Merlin said, but Arthur grabbed his shoulder as he walked away and swung him back around. "Or not," he grumbled.

"My cousin has made a bet with me regarding the number of gnomes I can hide in here before Gwen throws them all out into the rubbish bin," he said. Oh, wonderful, because any bet with Sir K was clearly a really good idea. But Arthur wasn't done talking yet. "But I'm out of gnomes, so I need you to go into the town and see if you can find more."

Merlin huffed a sigh, inhaling some more flour. "But, Arthur, they're hideous. And I'm covered in _flour_," he said hopelessly. The gnomes' hideousness seemed to be part of their general appeal.

"I know! Isn't it fantastic? And you can shake out your shirt or something before you go, and then you won't be covered with flour," Arthur said, and Merlin just stared at him like he'd taken leave of his senses. "Well, you won't be _as_ covered with flour. That's what you get for getting into a prank war with Gwaine." Merlin looked down at his purple—make that lavender, with all the flour—shirt and snorted. What he needed was a completely new shirt, but of course he didn't have any. It was a well done prank, he had to admit—or would have admitted, if he was in the mood to be forgiving, which he wasn't quite.

...

Leon, who had only been hoping to get Arthur to sit still for five minutes and give him a hand with some of the paperwork, felt this was the time to clear his throat. "Are you sure that is wise, sire?"

"Yes, I'm sure!" Arthur said, then gave Leon a sidelong glance. "Do you ever say anything else?"

"It's just that—what?"

"K pointed it out to me just the other day," Arthur said, cutting his eyes at Leon as he looked him up and down. Leon shifted under this annoyingly close scrutiny. "A very narrow view of life and its possibilities, he said. I can't say I disagree. Anyway, what's wrong with the gnomes?"

"Well—" Leon stammered, trying to deal with this bit of news while still maintaining his line of thought, "I understand that garden gnomes have supernatural properties, and…"

"—I mean, if everyone's always going to take Gwen's side all the time Camelot will be incredibly boring! And probably have too many flowers." Arthur blinked, and Leon was pleased to find that at least his bit of news also caused the King to pause as well. "What do you mean, supernatural? Like magic?"

"Yes, sire. There are legends that they—_eat _people, sire."

"But I've seen them in gardens all over Camelot!" Arthur insisted. "I saw one in Merlin's mother's pumpkin patch!"

"Yes, but if they're dangerous—"

"_It was doing a wee_. Hilariously, I might add. How dangerous is that? At least Hunith has a sense of humor…."

Leon, who felt himself sympathy-blushing as Merlin looked about ready to crawl into a hole from mortification, tried to stay on topic. "They only attack those with noble blood," Leon said. "And their power can multiply the more you have—"

Arthur raised an eyebrow, suddenly taking on the expression that he often gave Leon and sometimes Uther when he was alive. It was the look of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and didn't need anyone telling him what he ought to do. Even before Arthur opened his mouth he knew that he didn't stand a chance trying to convince him of anything. "I know you're just trying to protect me, Leon, but I don't plan on acting like my father and chasing every magical rumor under the sun, especially if the only evidence I have is hearsay and old wives' tales. Understood?"

Leon nodded. "Yes, sire."

"Good. Listen, if you're worried about Merlin, you can go with him. He'll need help carrying them, anyway. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go clear some room in the small study in the North Tower—you can put whatever gnomes you find in there."

And Arthur came quite close to skipping out of the room, leaving Leon a sheaf full of paperwork that he would no doubt have to do himself later.

He and Merlin spoke together:

"Gwen's going to kill us."

"Unless the gnomes get us first!" Merlin added, and laughed until Leon gave him a look. "Alright, sorry." He pulled on his jacket, and gave Leon his 'serious business' face. "You ready?"

Leon nodded bravely. "As ready as I'll ever be."

"Right, then." Merlin squared his shoulders, looking ready for anything. "Let's go do some shopping."


	16. Chapter 16

Gwaine was quite successfully avoiding his duties by hiding in the kitchens and flirting with the maids, one of his favorite pastimes. They fed him scraps of food while he lounged on one of the long benches and amused them with his stories of distant lands and mostly-true adventures.

"Sir Gwaine?"

It was therefore startling to be accosted by another male voice. The giggling, shouting, and cooing of women stopped.

Gwaine lifted his head to find a messenger standing awkwardly at the door. "Um. Yes?" he asked, the _Can't you see I'm busy? _left unsaid.

_How the hell had this guy __**found**__ him?_

"Her Majesty the Queen requests your presence."

_Oh. __**That **__was how._

Gwaine deflated, cracking the back of his head loudly on the bench. "Well, ladies," he said. "I guess I'll just have to tell you about the dragon next time."

The kitchen girls at least pretended to sound disappointed as he followed the servant out. The messenger led him through most of the castle and up the stairs to the royal chambers until he stood at Gwen's rooms. Gwaine never understood why royalty had separate rooms like that. He had even heard that they actually had separate beds! Which, to Gwaine, ruined all the fun of getting married.

"Your majesty: Sir Gwaine," the messenger announced. She was sat in front of a large mirror, and a handmaid was braiding her hair.

"Ah! So he was in the kitchens?" she asked, watching them in the mirror.

"He was, my lady."

Gwaine shook his head and chuckled as the servant bowed out. "I shall have to wake earlier in the morning to outwit you, my queen," he said, with a cheeky wink and a lavish bow.

Gwen pursed her lips, seeming a bit too proud of herself. "You might try. Sir Leon would be pleased."

"Ha!" Gwaine laughed. "Yeah, that'll be the day," he said, turning and going to the desk and poking at the papers, trying to make it look brash and bored and not merely something to do that wasn't leer at the queen (he had a love for beautiful hair and hair-touching that was not quite as platonic as befitted the situation, and as much as Gwaine was loath to admit it, he did know the _meaning _of restraint). "So, you've discovered my hiding place and called me out of it. I'm going to rate the emergency at at least a nine."

Gwen rolled her eyes and dismissed her maid, whom Gwaine had no compunctions about tracking lecherously with his eyes as she swished out of the room.

Gwen's cough snapped his eyes up at her.

"Stop fiddling with Arthur's things," she said, shooing him away from the desk. "I...need your help."

"With?" Gwaine asked: ready, willing, and bored.

"Arthur."

Gwaine turned back to the table. "You want me to _really_ jack his stuff up? Are we going for annoy? Because that basically comes standard. Or do you actually want me to take him out to the woods, steal his clothes and leave him there, or something?"

Gwen tried to look shocked instead of laugh. "Don't sound so _eager_!" she cried, whacking him on the arm. "I just need—oh, it's silly."

"What is it?" Gwaine asked, bemused smile fading.

"It's the gnomes."

"The gnomes? Gnome**_s_**?"

"Yes, I need you to help me get rid of them! Arthur thinks they are so funny, but they're awful! They give me the creeps!" she paused, looking at Gwaine closely: "It's not funny, Gwaine!"

Gwaine laughed, but, "Oh, I know it's not funny," he said. But then he looked at her sidelong, as a thought struck him. "Why are you asking _me_? Can't you have a servant get rid of them?"

"And get them sacked?"

"Oh, so getting _me_ sacked is fine?"

Gwen smiled disarmingly. "Gwaine, if Arthur was going to sack you, he would have done it long ago!" she said, almost-cheekily as she put her hand on his arm.

He shrugged. "Oddly comforting."

"And anyway, who else in this castle is brave _and_ foolish enough to defy Arthur—" she added, this time quite cheekily, prodding him in the chest, "_and _enjoy it? I thought you'd jump at the chance."

Gwaine threw up his arms in surrender. "Oh, do not mistake me, my lady. It would be a pleasure."

Gwen rolled her eyes again. "I probably shouldn't encourage you."

"You probably shouldn't," he admitted, grinning widely. "At any rate, where are the little buggers? And, um—" he grew serious for a moment, "how many exactly has he got?"

"Oh, I don't know, not that many. But he's getting more. I'll have them put in the anteroom tonight—you do whatever you need to do. I _will _make it up to you."

Gwaine ignored the opportunity to make a crass joke and nodded solemnly. "Consider it done."

"Thank you, Gwaine," she said, with a huge sigh that sounded suspiciously like a beginning rather than the end of a conversation. "Now, I'd like to ask your help with something else..."

...

Leon and Merlin walked on foot into the Lower Town, their determination to do a bit of shopping for the King lost somewhat among the hustle and bustle of the actual market. Though he welcomed the walk, Leon usually traveled through the marketplace on horseback. The scent of spices, animals, baking bread, and people mixed in the air into a very particular odor that Leon didn't often experience on the ground level. Though it disoriented him, Merlin appeared to be used to it.

"I think I've seen Charles—he sells pumpkins—with some gnomes. And Sif I'm sure will have something gnomish." Merlin looked up at Leon from where he had been examining a potato from one of the stands. "So these gnomes really are dangerous?"

Leon shrugged. "Gwaine said they might be. But they haven't done anything, have they? We can't just get rid of all of Arthur's gnomes without good reason."

"And we all know how Arthur gets when he doesn't get his way," Merlin said. He was still examining the potato with a critical eye.

"Er—what are you doing?"

"Contemplating dinner."

Leon was about to ask what there could possibly be to contemplate when he remembered (again) that Merlin was a servant and therefore did not usually get his choice of sustenance. And thinking of food made Leon's stomach growl, and amongst the varied smells of the marketplace he just caught a whiff of bacon pies coming from a stall nearby.

While Merlin continued to mull over the possibility of splurging on potatoes for dinner Leon procured a couple of pies and brought them back over. Merlin's eyes went wide as Leon handed him one.

"Oh—Thanks!"

Leon grinned, but eyed the pie with as much skepticism as Merlin had the potato. "You know, I've never actually had one of these before."

"Oh, they're brilliant—go on, try it! The sausage ones are alright, but stay away from the curry!"

Leon looked around. "They didn't give me any forks..."

Merlin laughed, apparently thinking he was joking, and took a big bite of browned pastry. Leon tried to observe observed his technique with an open mind.

"You certainly know your way around!" he said, taking a cautious nibble from his own food. "Did you grow up in a city, or something?"

Merlin laughed at Leon's hesitance to eat the pastry, already three bites into his own before the knight apparently decided it wasn't poisonous or unnatural and set to eating his own. His question, though, caught Merlin momentarily off guard. He shrugged as they continued walking, swerving to avoid a pack of small children that were running pell-mell down the crowded street. He did it without even thinking, and nearly collided with Leon when he didn't move as well. Rather than tripping over the taller man, Merlin managed to skip back the other direction, and he didn't even drop his pastry. When he was done nearly falling over his own and Leon's feet, he remembered he was supposed to be answering a question. And, unlike the riddles, this one was easily enough answered.

"No, I didn't. The village where my mum and I lived is really small. This was all... new when I got here. But you get used to it, after awhile. Between errands for both Gaius and Arthur, I think I knew the Lower Town sooner than I could find my way around the whole castle," he answered. "How have you lived in Camelot for so long without ever having one of those?" he added, waving at the pastry Leon was still holding.

Leon, trying not to appear any more like a nobleman than he already did, tried to quickly think of a good excuse. "Well, you know how it is. You get into a certain kind of routine. I never had much time to just go wandering about the town. Not that you just go wandering, of course," he added in a Gwen-like way. "I just wish I could get to know these people a bit better."

"I wish I could ride a horse everywhere!" Merlin said with a laugh.

They reached Sif's stand, a couple of carts linked together and filled to the brim with all kinds of knick-knacks and things. Leon pawed through it half-heartedly, almost hoping he wouldn't find anything.

"It must be sort of weird—you know, working with all these knights that never grew up as noblemen," Merlin said.

Leon raised an eyebrow, surprised. With all the new knights coming from non-noble families Leon was starting to feel like the odd one out amongst them. And Merlin noticed that? "Well, it's not so bad," Leon said. "Nobles and commoners are similar enough where it matters, although I doubt my parents would be of that opinion."

"You're from the House of Cameliard, aren't you? Are you a nephew?"

"A—son, actually," Leon said. "Cameliard is my father. The line passes through ultimogeniture, and so my uncle will inherit Cameliard from mother and father. I've had to make my own way in the world."

There was a pause as Leon turned over some rusty farm equipment, and then Merlin said, "Do you miss it?"

"…Not really," Leon said. He glanced over and saw Merlin staring at him with surprise. "I was raised to call my father 'my lord,' and my mother spent most of her time arranging other peoples' marriages. And my sister is quite a bit older than me. They aren't awful, they're just a bit funny, you know? Well anyway, I imagine country parents have more time to spend with their children." He tried to think of a tactful way to ask after Merlin's family, but wasn't sure how. "Your...parents work, then? Are they farmers?"

While he was listening to Leon, Merlin prowled through Sif's assorted things until he found was he was looking for. There was one small gnome buried under the heaps of everything else, and he dug it out and handed over some of the coins Arthur had handed him for the express purpose of buying the horrid things. He set the gnome gently into the bag he'd brought.

"Well, yes and no. I mean... Probably you're right. But my mum still worked in our fields or with our neighbors most of the day," he said. "She was easy to find, though, even if she was working. I used to go find her, when I got bored," he said. When he got bored, or when the older kids inevitably chased him off for being younger and scrawny and not good at climbing trees or sneaking around on made-up adventures. He'd always had some seriously mixed luck with sneaking around.

"When you got bored and needed someone to bother?" Leon asked with a grin. Not so very different from children everywhere. Not even so different from a certain young prince who, at a lack for someone else to bother, had often sought Leon out to drive him to distraction when he got bored. Merlin laughed appreciatively and stopped in front of a wagon of pumpkins. They were huge, abnormally huge, and he and Leon both just blinked at them in astonishment for a split second.

There were also gnomes. Gnomes all over, as if they were guarding the pumpkins, which was decidedly creepy. But it did make their job easier, because now they wouldn't have to wander around all afternoon looking for the things. Between the two of them, they picked the least creepy ones.

"I used to sit and get in her way on purpose until she sent me away to do something more useful, or at least less annoying, yes," Merlin answered as he reached hesitantly around a pumpkin to grab a gnome.

"Arthur used to get in the way when I was polishing my armor or brushing my horse or doing anything important," Leon commented off-handedly, and Merlin looked at him with a wicked grin.

"Arthur?" he asked, as if surprised. Though, after he gave it some thought, he supposed he shouldn't be too surprised. It wasn't as if Arthur didn't like being incredibly obnoxious. Leon looked a little guilty, as if unsure whether or not he should have said that. Instead of answering the question, he just shrugged one shoulder.

"Was your father a farmer too?" he asked, for something to change the subject, and out of the corner of his eye, caught a funny, sudden stillness as Merlin paused in what he was doing. He only paused for the briefest of moments, hoping he'd covered his discomfort as he dug around for the coins again. Merlin wasn't sure how to answer that one. He'd always been told he was a rotten liar, and he knew it was true, and it wasn't as if he really enjoyed lying to people, especially when they were being nice. And Leon seemed to be trying very earnestly to carry on a conversation. But he couldn't just... not answer that question, because that would be even more obvious than a slight lie.

"Don't know. I never met him," he answered a bit sadly, fidgeting-but-not-fidgeting with the coins in his hands as if he was counting them. He knew them all by shape and feel, of course, and had no need to look at them as he counted them out, but he did anyway. It was less obvious than his standard stammering and making of excuses. And it wasn't as if his answer wasn't mostly the truth. He hadn't known his father, not until they'd gone to find him when Kilgarrah was trying to burn down Camelot. And he certainly hadn't had time to get to know him, given that he'd died before they'd even made it back. It wasn't worth the trouble trying to make up some sort of plausible story that'd only go horribly wrong and catch him in what was probably an even worse lie than concealing that he could do magic. Kilgarrah had killed numerous knights, after all. And Galahad, who Leon had sworn to watch out for. Optimistically, Merlin thought he could maybe be forgiven for the magic if Arthur didn't just banish him right off when and if he found out. But the dragon? There'd be no forgiveness for freeing Kilgarrah. Not that Merlin would particularly blame them for not forgiving him. He couldn't really even forgive himself for that particular disaster, not completely.

Merlin shook his head to dislodge that train of thought and glanced up at Leon with his usual bright grin.

"I'm sure your parents never had any of these," he laughed, hefting one of the small gnomes before putting it in the bag with its fellows. "Unless they have the same taste in decorations as Arthur?" he asked. Then he gave the bag another look. He could have sworn they'd bought a gnome that was leaning nonchalantly on a trusty rake, but... the only gnome in the bag holding a rake was definitely holding it up as if to rake a garden. Then he shrugged. He'd seen so many gnomes lately, there was a good possibility one of the others had been leaning on a rake.

Leon spent too much of his life looking after those younger than him or under his care not to notice the particular look on Merlin's face as he spoke about his father. He could tell when Arthur was lying, he could tell when Gwen was lying, when the knights were lying—Gwaine was the only difficult one to master, since his constant alteration of the truth only made Leon generally suspicious of everything he said. But Merlin…Merlin always looked so sincere, and to see him give all the signs of lying surprised Leon. Could he be ashamed of his family in some way? Perhaps—but then why did Merlin give Leon that glance, like the knowledge he kept back somehow pertained to him in particular?

He should forget about it. There was no reason why Leon should know about Merlin's family, anyway, and he could keep it secret if he wished.

Still, it was strange…

Merlin was so distressed that he put the gnomes into his bag while his money was still clutched in his hand. The pumpkin-seller was looking unhappy.

"Here," Leon said, putting money from his own purse into the man's hand.

Merlin blushed. "Er—Arthur gave me money specifically for—"

"Keep it," Leon said dismissively, then added, "You can buy some more potatoes on our way back."

Merlin's eyes lit up, the discomfort of his lie gone completely. Leon was just glad that he wasn't the only one who enjoyed the simple pleasures of life.

Weighed down with their purchases of gnomes, potatoes, and one very large pumpkin (which Leon was starting to regret that he had bought after the first hundred yards), knight and servant returned from their mission victorious. As they walked they chatted now and then about Leon's family. Since he hadn't seen them in years it was easier to view their cold, crotchety and often completely mad behavior in a humorous light, and he entertained Merlin with the story about how his mother once knocked over an entire wedding cake in order to get his older sister first in line to meet a particularly eligible bachelor from a neighboring lordship.

"Have any of the other knights got siblings?" Merlin asked. "I mean, aside from Elyan of course."

"Gwaine does," Leon said. He paused, and glanced at Merlin. "You're good friends with Gwaine—look, do you think you could keep a secret?"

Again that odd look flashed through Merlin's eyes, but he agreed with honesty in his features.

"I've begun a search for Gwaine's younger siblings. There is a brother and a sister, I think. They were separated many years ago, but I believe that I found someone who can find them. I wrote I letter to them a while ago, but I haven't heard any response, yet."

"Well—it's still early, isn't it?" Merlin said cautiously. "I mean—they might not even be in Albion!"

"I sincerely hope they are." Leon shrugged. "I can't tell Gwaine for fear of getting his hopes up. Anyway, I would be very grateful if you kept your eye out for news from Caerleon's kingdom."

"Sure."

Leon pursed his lips, giving the Lower Town a final glance. "I hope it gives Gwaine some more stability in his life. I mean, you can't choose your family, but you still need them. They help ground you, whoever they are."

"What about Arthur and Sir K?"

Leon paused. "OK, maybe not all the time. But you know what I mean."

...

Arthur tried to make his bookkeeping meetings with Geoffrey of Monmouth interesting. His latest tactic was to take a walk around the castle while Geoff puffed after him talking about uniform scripts and other nonsense. It was a bit on the rude side, but it kept the conversations short. Besides, Geoff needed the exercise. They were talking about lined columns or something when they saw Elaine coming toward them. She appeared to be very annoyed, and Arthur immediately had a bad feeling about this.

She barely dropped a curtsy before she said, "Your Highness. Geoffrey, may I have the key to the broom closet in the library, please?"

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

"Oh, nothing, I'm just going to lock myself inside with Leon."

Geoff barked a laugh, but expertly turned it into a cough.

"I beg your pardon?" Arthur said, looking nervous.

"Really, I can't wait around forever! I don't mind his shyness, but this is getting—"

Just then Leon himself rounded the corner, Merlin walking with him. His arms were full with a giant pumpkin. He seemed to be having a pretty difficult time with it because his face was quite red. Still, he nodded at Arthur and Geoff, waited about a half-second in silence as he looked at Elaine, then continued on his way.

"Elaine!" Arthur complained as soon as Leon had gone, "that was the perfect time to talk to him!"

"You've got to encourage him to talk to you," Geoff added. "Thales notes in his _Psuche—_"

Elaine growled in frustration. "I can't help it! It's not my fault that he stuns me with his beauty every time I see him! 'Oh, sorry I didn't immediately say something to you before you got shy and ran off, Sir Leon. Maybe if you stood still for two seconds I could stop being overwhelmed by your magnificent golden locks and actually snog you'…"

She walked off in a huff, and Geoff nervously excused himself and followed after her, leaving Merlin and Arthur standing together. Arthur felt a shudder ride up his spine.

"Women," he said, "are strange. It's a good thing you don't have a girlfriend, Merlin, or you would no doubt find yourself in some serious trouble."

"Yes, sire?"

"Yes!" Arthur said, feeling that Merlin wasn't taking him seriously. "Best stick with gnomes! Oh—that reminds me—best not to tell Gwen about your little excursion, eh? Just put them all in the anteroom—I've asked an antiquarianist to come and look at them. Don't ask me what that means, but I understand they can do a bit of cleaning."

Arthur gave Merlin a slap on the back and watched him run off after Leon. "Servants," he said, rolling his eyes. He shrugged and continued on his way, absently singing to himself, "_And if you ask me how I'm feeling, don't tell me you're too blind to see, I'm never gonna give you_...wait—oh, for the love of—Now _I'm _singing it! _MER_LIN!"

He shook his fist at Merlin's retreating back and stamped off toward the castle.


	17. Chapter 17

_"Now, I'd like to ask your help with something else..."_

Gwaine beamed wickedly. "Help with something else?" he began, for she had really set herself up for this one: "Usually when an attractive married woman corners me alone in her room and asks for my help, she can only mean one thing."

"Gwaine!" she cried, exasperated, hardly batting an eye at his hopeless proposition. "Can you be serious for one moment?"

"Oh, you wouldn't like me any other way," he teased, before schooling his features into something resembling sincerity. "But you know I would do anything for you, milady," he said, suddenly accidentally too serious.

"It's about Lancelot—"

"Ha!" Gwaine laughed and turned away, more to avoid how awkwardly he had just proclaimed his undying loyalty to the queen. Maybe she hadn't noticed. "Oh, Lance is fine. Don't tell me you feel _sorry _for him!"

"He is a good man," she insisted.

Gwaine raised his eyebrows.

"I mean, not _that_ good. I mean—you know—he is a good man, but not the good man for me, obviously," she stammered, wringing her hands. "I love Arthur," she said.

"Oh, I believe you," Gwaine said. "I think you're mad, but I believe you. What do you want me to do? What's the problem?"

"He is...still in love with me. I am afraid he's going to do something stupid."

Gwaine snorted. "And that's different from normal how?" he grinned, forgetting already about his promise to be serious. When she glared, he threw his arms up in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Serious. Um. I mean, what do you want me to do? He's trying his best to look for love in all the wrong places to get you out of his head—I don't think even _I _could help him improve in that area."

"He is just so _loving_, Gwaine! His heart is so great, it's as though his chest swells with the size. Anyone he loved would be so doted on, so cared for, he's almost undeservable—"

Gwaine raised one eyebrow. "You _sure _you're not in love with him?"

"GWAINE."

"Okay, okay, I know. His heart is the size of Arthur's ego. But Lord knows Arthur needs you, and Lancelot needs someone who loves him just as much as he thinks he loves you. The only other person that love-stricken in all of Camelot is..." he trailed off. The answer was obvious. "Well, aside from Leon and Elaine, I mean," he added though, just in case he was misunderstood.

The awkward look Gwen gave him told him they were thinking the same thing. But who would be the first to say it?

"I mean, _Galehaut's _clearly smitten," Gwaine blurted out with a dismissive laugh, "and the things he would do to Lance if Lance was that way inclined, but for all his writing sad poetry and knowing the names of flowers and always smelling and dressing nice, our Lancelot is as straight as my c—as _the day _is long."

Gwen was still looking at him awkwardly.

"What do you want _me_ to do about _that _hot mess?" Gwaine shrieked, backing away slightly. "I can't just convince Lance to switch sides like that!"

"This is about love, Gwaine, not sides. If Sir Galehaut is—"

"No, you're right. It's not about love, it's about sex! It's—what is it you think goes on inside the male brain, exactly? We're not all just lustful—well, okay, _I _am—but we don't just—you can't just go from ladies to knights like that! It's not how it works!" Somehow he felt it his duty to stand up for the masculine species, whether they deserved it or not.

"Why not?"

Now it was Gwaine's turn to splutter awkwardly. And he didn't _do _awkward. "It's not about love, Gwen—it's about—it's about—I mean, sure, _I_ don't mind that sort of thing on occasion—but he's _Lancelot_! He's too—perfect. And weird. And—and—and he's hurting _himself_, Gwen, you can't fix his problems for him!"

Gwen shrugged. Her calm bothered Gwaine. "But you see, it's not up to you or me to make him 'switch sides.' That is up to Galehaut, and if there's anyone who could, it would be him."

Gwaine deflated. She was mad, mad to think this would work, that this was sound in any universe. And the real kicker was that he was going to help her achieve her wild scheme even if she dressed him as Cupid and had him fire tiny arrows at the pair of knights.

"What are _we _doing, then?" he whined.

"Helping them along. We shall need to recruit the others. And we will call it _Operation: Hauttie and Lottie_."

Gwaine cringed, partially at what he was getting himself into, but also at the really, _really _stupid name.

**...**

When Arthur was done giving him both roundabout relationship advice and directions for where to put the gnomes, Merlin hurried to catch up with Leon, who'd vacated the general area pretty quickly for how slow he'd dragged his feet up the hill on the way home. They both headed straight to the apothecary, by somewhat mutual agreement that there were too many things to carry any further than there. Merlin had bought, besides the potatoes, carrots and peas and a loaf of bread for his and Gaius' dinner. Leon had the giant pumpkin that had seemed like a good idea at the time but which had grown heavier with every last step back up the hill, to the point that he could swear his arms were about to fall off from the combined load of pumpkin and lawn gnomes. When he set it on one of the tables that was mostly clear, it nearly overbalanced, sending papers and a book cascading to the floor as Leon and Merlin both jumped forward to catch the pumpkin.

"It's alright, it was bound to happen eventually," Merlin laughed as they set the pumpkin on the floor and started picking up papers. When the papers were more or less stacked on the table again in some semblance of order they both stood back and looked at the huge pumpkin thoughtfully.

"What are you planning on doing with it?" Merlin asked finally, stumped. Leon looked over at him and then back to the pumpkin and then shrugged one shoulder, crossing his arms.

"I—" he started, but the door opened and they both turned to see Gaius. He also gave the pumpkin a look, arching his eyebrow with a slight frown.

"Merlin, I hope you're not expecting me to make soup out of that..." he commented, setting his bag down on the big table. Merlin grinned at him and waved a hand at the vegetables and fresh bread.

"No, Leon bought it. Those there, though, I thought we could put in some soup," he said, "But we have to take these upstairs for Arthur." Gaius gave Merlin another of those arched-eyebrow looks and Merlin squirmed a little, because he hated chopping vegetables, and he knew that Gaius knew he hated chopping vegetables. Leon turned to grab one of the bags to hide a smile as Gaius finally turned to retrieve the chopping knife from next to the fire with the barest hint of a smile.

"I really do need his help, Gaius, if you can spare him," Leon said, because Merlin was still looking guilty. With a good-natured wave, Gaius shooed them both outside, gnomes, pumpkin, and all. A passing servant looked curiously at the bags they were carrying and Leon took the opportunity to flag the man down.

"Would you mind taking these to the King's anteroom? There should be other gnomes there, so you'll know when you've found the place. Don't let the Queen catch you," he said to the confused man, who shrugged and took the two bags away. Merlin frowned, seeing his escape from vegetable chopping vanish into the castle.

"Merlin, I have some paperwork to do, but I could use some help carrying the papers," Leon offered, and was rewarded with another of those bright grins, although there was a certain impishness about it this time.

"You're going to the archives?" Merlin asked minutes later as Leon handed him armfuls of various papers. Leon shook his head with a crooked half-smile. Geoffrey was still put-out about finding a certain manservant and senior knight sitting on the floor with a pile of antique scrolls and books and chatting about riddles. It made working in the archives decidedly uncomfortable, as the man had the mannerism of an offended vulture when he was guarding his precious books.

"No, not unless I have to. I can work in the hall, nothing is going on in there today," he said speculatively.

"You could come work at Gaius'. I'm going to look for those gnomes in some of Gaius' old books, if you get tired of paperwork," Merlin offered, and Leon looked at him in a little surprise. But the invitation seemed genuine, so he followed Merlin back to the apothecary with his stack of papers and before too long, they were both settled at opposite ends of the big table, Merlin with several books, and the rest of the table taken up with Leon's various and sundry papers.


	18. Chapter 18

Gwaine was lost in thought as he wandered through the castle after his talk with the queen. On the way he passed a moping Lancelot, and, through a combination of the awkwardness of talking to a guy he had just been talking about, and Lancelot's self-absorbing moroseness, respectively, the normally gregarious and normally polite knights passed each other without a word.

Which was weird.

Gwaine shook himself. He'd have to sneak back upstairs to the royal chambers later tonight to destroy those gnomes for Gwen (while hopefully dodging Arthur, whom Gwaine was _pretty _sure wouldn't _actually _kill him even if he caught him in the act, but wanted to avoid just the same), so drinking to excess was not an option tonight. Instead, he was contemplating if he would like to have help on his quest.

At the very least, he had a few hours to kill before supper.

So Gwaine burst into Gaius' apothecary with a flourish and a grin. "The _fuuuuuun_ has arrived!" he exclaimed, finding, to his pleasure and surprise, that both Merlin and Leon were there. "What ho, lads?"

They looked up at him from...papers. Which didn't make sense to Gwaine. I mean, the sun was shining, wasn't it? They had the afternoon off, didn't they? What were they doing ruining their eyes like this? "Whatcha doing cooped up in here?" he asked again, since he had been ignored, walking over and poking at the things on the desk.

"Gwaine," Leon said, snatching a paper from his hand. "We are doing very important work. You are welcome to be here, but please be quiet."

Leon might as well have asked fish to fly, and Gwaine scoffed accordingly, but, "Right," he said, trying to mean it.

"And stop tracking flour all over the place. I'll tell Gaius it was you," Merlin threatened. He was, hilariously, still dusted in a light coating of flour.

Gwaine looked down. The walkway in front of the physician's quarters hadn't been swept yet, so Gwaine had already tracked in a great deal of white powder, which was still swirling about his feet. In all fairness, he saw other footprints as well as his own. He put his hand on his hip contrarily. "Yeah, but who'll still be the one to clean it up?" he goaded.

Merlin sighed and rolled his eyes heavenward. "Me."

Gwaine thought this was terribly funny. But as Leon and Merlin went back to their tomes, he found a broom and began sweeping the flour back out the door and away from the walkway. He whistled bar tunes while he worked.

"Gwaine, could you _not _whistle, please?" Leon called. "I'm trying to do figures."

"Sure, Leon," Gwaine said amicably, and, taking a deep breath, began to sing instead:  
_"Well, show me the way  
To the next whiskey bar  
Oh, don't ask why  
Oh, don't ask why  
For if we don't find  
The next whiskey bar  
I tell you we must die  
I tell you we must die  
I tell you, I tell you, I tell you we must—"_

"GWAINE!" Leon and Merlin cried at once, and, laughing, Gwaine stopped and, tapping the broom against the doorframe to get the excess flour off, said, "Okay, okay, I was done anyway."

But he was still bored, and went to a pile of books that looked vaguely exciting—in the way a Northman thought a book was exciting, which was judged solely on the richness of the decorative bindings—and, pushing aside a few papers and a blanket, discovered a large tome which, when he opened it—

"NO!" Merlin squealed. "Gwaine, not _that _one!"

Gwaine nearly jumped at the exclamation, and looked down in alarm at the page as if it might decide to bite him. But, scanning it, he quickly realized it was written in a language he didn't understand, and those symbols didn't look very new-religion to Gwaine, and—

_Oh, shit._

Leon looked up, curious and a bit concerned. Merlin looked on, horrified. Because _of course_ Gwaine had happened upon the _one _book of magic spells Merlin was hiding in plain sight like either a moron or a genius.

So Gwaine did the only thing he could do.

He spread his mouth into a slow, wide, wicked, toothy grin. "Oh, _Mer_lin, really!" he said, taking the book up and, facing them so Leon could not see any of the pages, leafing through it with no little relish. "What are you doing with a book like this?"

"Gwaine..." Merlin groaned, looking pale and sounding weak.

"What is it, Gwaine?" Leon just looked annoyed.

"Oh, lots of the boys have them about, Sir Leon, I thought you'd know!"

"Know what?"

"About these dirty picture books—" He turned the page and, bugging out his eyes, turned the book sideways. "Get a load of that centerfold! Why, she's not wearing anything but a tiny—"

"Merlin!" Leon said as he realized what Gwaine was driving at, rounding on Merlin with disappointment a blush.

Merlin stammered. It actually took him a minute longer to get where Gwaine had gone with this, but when it registered, he turned bright red and sunk down in his chair. "Oh, no..." he groaned, looking at Leon with a kind of sad, defeated horror.

"Woohoo!" Gwaine continued, driving the point home, and enjoying himself immensely even if his hands we slightly sweaty at the thought of this going horribly wrong if Leon decided to confiscate the thing. "This must be a new volume, because I haven't seen any nun do _that _before! Hey, Leon, you've got to take a look at these, might help take your mind off the Lady El—"

Leon pushed the book away. "Merlin," he said, his voice even though his glare spoke volumes, "put that in your room _right now_. What if Gaius saw you with that? I don't want to see it left out again, is that understood?"

Merlin was up like a shot, taking the book from Gwaine and going to his room.

Gwaine chuckled, but he saw that the look in Leon's eyes was a bit too harsh, so he lowered his voice and, "Oh, be fair, Sir Leon. He's young! And clearly I'm rubbing off on him a bit too much—eh, Merlin?" he added, as Merlin came back into the room, still red-faced and went back to his papers without making eye contact with anyone.

"Oh, are you to blame then?" Leon said, calming somewhat to be turning the disappointed face on someone much more logically deserving. (Gwaine wasn't sure whether to be pleased or hurt by how much easier and more natural it was for people to blame him.) But Leon could give the disappointed face to Gwaine until he turned blue and it wasn't going to change _anything_.

Gwaine winked. "I'm always to blame," he said.

"Now, Gwaine, can you please leave us? We're trying to work..." Merlin said tiredly. Gwaine was surprised he'd even gotten up the courage to speak again so soon: his face was still quite pink (as was Leon's, which Gwaine was only barely able to refrain from laughing about all over again). Partially for something to distract himself and partially to see what could be so bloody interesting, he stood next to Merlin's chair and looked over his shoulder at the book he was reading. It was one of Gaius' books on magical creatures, but from Merlin's tone of voice, he hadn't been finding what he'd wanted in there.

"Seriously? You're trying to work? On a pretty day like this?" he asked, going to sit on the edge of the table before Leon gave a pointed cough that implied he'd rather not have Gwaine sitting on his important papers, at which he leapt to his feet, not wanting to sit anyway.

"You could always help," Merlin ventured, this time handing him a book from the pile scattered in front of him as he pushed his current one away. Gwaine stared at him as if he was going completely daft. Oh, if he _had_ to he'd help find whatever Merlin was looking for, but the situation didn't yet look that desperate. Merlin was, for example, not nearly flustered enough to indicate he needed real assistance. Well, sure, he still looked flustered, but at _Gwaine_: at the books he just looked mildly annoyed, like he'd been looking at their ugly faces for too long.

Or, you know, like his best friend had just given him the embarrassment of his life. Twice in one day, ha!

Then Merlin grinned, which was a little unexpected, but Merlin's bright grin was infectious, so Gwaine smiled back, perhaps a little uncertainly. Merlin turned to dig in the pocket of his jacket, which was draped over the back of his chair. With no warning whatsoever, Gwaine found something round and bright red flying at his face. He reached up and caught it without so much as blinking.

"Or you can sit there and eat an apple and maybe be quiet," his friend commented. Gwaine watched him suspiciously for only a split second, thinking there was something a bit off about that grin of Merlin's, but quickly discarded his suspicion. This was _Merlin_. If he'd been up to anything sneaky, it would have been written all over his face. The young man was a rotten liar. So, with a shrug, he sat down and took a bite of the delicious red apple.

The, um, _horribly sour _delicious apple.

Gwaine looked at it, confused, and tried another bite.

No, it wasn't mealy, he mused, turning it over in his mouth. It wasn't dry, either, he decided, after a third bite, but it smelled...wrong. Gwaine was as indiscriminate with his apples as he was with his women, and that, combined with his less-than-pampered life, meant he would eat an apple in any state.

_But this—_

He looked at Merlin, who, with one glint of his baby blue eyes, cracked. He snorted, trying to cover it up, but the laugh was all in his eyes. They were dissolving into laughter.

_—wasn't an apple._

Gwaine had just been pranked!

With an _apple_! What had Merlin done, transmogrified an onion into an apple? Ugh. That was what it tasted like. He wouldn't be able to smell onion for a week, he decided, as he spit outside into the street. Ugh, and now his eyes were watering, and Merlin was _still laughing..._

Merlin had just pranked him with an _apple_! Was nothing sacred?

Leon looked up and just stared at him. He realized that to Leon (who of course knew nothing of Merlin's magic), Gwaine had just eaten half of an apple and then started spluttering. He could see the thoughts running through Leon's sensible head: Drunk? Unfortunately not. A worm in the apple? That never stopped him before. The prank war? There was nothing a person (a normal person, anyway: joke's on Leon) could do to an apple. Eventually only one conclusion could be arrived at...

"Gwaine," he said, putting down his quill, "I know it's a bit narrow-minded of me to ask, but have you _lost your mind_, by any chance?"

Gwaine glared at Leon and sniffed. "It's nothing!"

Leon blinked, genuine concern radiating from his every feature. "Gwaine, are—are you _crying_?"

"No!" Gwaine sobbed.

Through onion-tear-stained eyes, Gwaine gave Merlin a death glare.

He had gone too far this time.

This meant _war_.


	19. Chapter 19

_A/N: So, apologies for uploading the last chapter incorrectly. It is now fixed and updated properly!_

...

Gwaine flipped his hair and ran from the room in a teary huff. Leon rolled his eyes—and Gwaine said _he _acted like a girl….

"Have you found anything, yet?" he asked Merlin as he turned back to his paperwork.

"No, not yet. These bestiaries, half of its made up and the other half doesn't make any…well, hang on!"

"What?"

"Have a look at this." Merlin brought his book over and Leon peered at the page of spidery script, illustrated with the picture of a small, jolly man with a beard and a pointy cap.

"_The Garden Dweller_," he read, "_known by Paracelsus as the genomos_."

Merlin pointed to another sentence. "_A magical spirit of the forest known for its skill in cultivating plants far beyond their natural size._"

Leon glanced at the giant pumpkin he purchased. "Well, that's certainly true. Er…what else does it say?"

"_He favors the peasant and makes his land fruitful...a friend of wild animals and plants, the genomos eats only the fruit of the land and the flesh of_—ah…"

"Flesh of what?"

Merlin pressed the book to his chest as Leon tried to look. "You're—not really of noble birth, right?"

"What? Of course I am, I was just telling you—"

"Ah. Right, and there isn't any chance that Arthur—"

"Arthur's the king! He's the definition of noble birth!"

"Well, you're not going to like this…"

Leon grabbed the book. "_…and the flesh of noblemen, whom they **roast alive**_?!"

Merlin grabbed the book back and read on. "…_for the noblemen are the mortal enemies of the forest, and the genomos avenge the trees felled and the deer hunted by noble hands. Though individually slow-moving, where many of these creatures gather together they can traverse fields in the blink of an eye—for indeed they can only move while no human eye is watching them…_" Merlin looked up. "Arthur's sent an antiquarian to have a look at them!"

Leon was already grabbing his sword. "Come on!"

When they arrived at the anteroom where the gnomes were being kept, everything was eerily quiet. It was that awkward time in the afternoon before dinner, when most of the bustle was happening downstairs in the kitchens. Arthur was probably still walking around, Gwen was probably relaxing in the library—even most of the guards were off-duty. The hallway was empty, with oddly-bright afternoon light coming through the windows.

"Do you hear anything?" Merlin said as Leon put his ear to the door.

Leon shook his head then, his hand on his sword, slowly drew the door open.

The normally inviting and cheery anteroom was empty except for light, a table and about twenty gnomes. They were sitting on the table, in rows, staring at the door with pink-cheeked, smiling, unmoving faces.

"Hello?" Merlin called, edging his way in.

"The antiquarian's not here," Leon said. But there was something odd about the room. He wasn't quite sure what it was at first—the afternoon light was coming through the windows very oddly, in kind of orangey, hazy shafts. "What is that smell?"

Leon tried to place it as Merlin took a look around. Nothing was burning. It was almost like the smell of a kiln that'd overheated, combined with some of Gaius's more offensive chemical concoctions and—and a hint of thunderstorm.

All of the gnomes seemed to be staring at him. He watched them. But they were just ordinary stone, weren't they? But in this light, in this haze, with those painted, dry ceramic eyes staring at him, how he wanted to blink…

"I think that's the smell of magical fire," Merlin said. He had gone around the large table and was now staring at the floor behind it.

Leon looked up. "How would you know that?"

"Well, I don't think there's any other way you could roast a man alive without burning his clothes."

Leon's heart caught in his throat as he dashed around the table, putting his hand on Merlin's shoulder to pull him away from what he was looking at, before Leon too saw it.

The sight, if Leon had not seen—and been forced to cut down—many a burned witch or warlock, would have made him be sick. It still made his stomach turn. There, on the floor behind the table, lay the remains of the antiquarianist, burnt to a sickeningly perfect crisp. The bones had been picked clean of flesh, but not overly-so...it looked like the remains of a very skinny pig. And still draped on his bones were his clothes, without singe or mark on them.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Merlin said, turning away as Leon knelt down.

"It was some kind of magic that killed him, certainly," Leon said. He touched the dead man's clothes but they were cool to the touch, and not treated with any chemicals. He steeled himself and touched the man's exposed collar bone. "But the corpse is still warm."

Merlin, now kneeling as well, crept forward, trying hard to look at Leon instead of the corpse. "We've got to warn Arthur."

Leon nodded stiffly. "I'll stay here, while you go after Arthur. Send a couple of guards if you have to—tell them its urgent and that I sent you. I'll keep an eye on things here."

"Right." Merlin started to pull himself up, then dropped back down, looking Leon in the eye. "The gnomes can only move when you're not looking at them."

"Yes?"

"You're not looking at them."

"Well, neither are...you…"

Slowly Leon and Merlin looked up at the table.

It was empty.

Leon wheeled around just as a ceramic gnome struck his arm and fell to the ground motionless, frozen in mid-leap. He kicked it savagely away and stared around. Gnomes stood frozen on the windowsills, on the floor, in the rafters.

"Don't take your eyes off them!" Merlin shouted. He had his back pressed flat against Leon's back.

Leon's gaze flitted from one gnome to the next, trying to keep them all in his line of sight. "OK, there are _way_ more than twenty of them!"

...

Leon was right. There were definitely more than twenty of these things. Where in the world were they all _coming _from? Had K bought him more of these horrid things? A bit frantically, Merlin also tried to keep his eye on all the gnomes at once. They wouldn't bother him, since he was certainly no noble, but he couldn't let them get around him to Leon. Not that this would have been easy, the two of them standing back to back in order to keep all the gnomes in sight.

"Maybe if we moved into the corner...?" Merlin ventured, not daring to blink. His eyes were already watering. Leon nodded, and managing to keep the gnomes in sight, they moved to a corner. It was much easier to see all the gnomes with a wall on either side, and Merlin took a second to blink.

"Get into the hallway, Merlin, and call for a guard," Leon said, not taking his eyes off the merry little red-hatted figures. Merlin glanced over at him and then back at the gnomes.

For a moment Merlin considered telling Leon that he would stay instead. The gnomes wouldn't attack him, after all. If he could keep his eyes on all of them while Leon went for help, long enough for him to get the door closed after him, it wouldn't matter if Merlin couldn't see the gnomes. They wouldn't bother him. Of course, he would then be stuck in the room with a dead, burned body and a lot of gnomes, and he didn't really relish the idea... but it was definitely preferable to Leon getting turned into a crisp. But Merlin could tell from the way Leon stood that there'd be no arguing the point, even if it made a lot of sense. That was the problem with knights, probably especially Leon. He wouldn't just let someone else take the chances.

"Right." Easier said than done, though. He carefully picked his way across the floor, and then bounded out into the corridor, hollering as he went. He didn't go far, pausing partway down the hall to shout at the top of his lungs. His voice rebounded off the walls, so he hoped—no, he knew—someone was bound to hear him.

"Anything?" Leon shouted from the room.

Merlin waited for the sound of approaching footsteps. None came. Where was everyone? Perhaps if he tried a little farther down the hall.

"Merlin, where are you?" Back in the room, Leon continued to keep his eyes on all the gnomes at once, but his eyes were no doubt beginning to burn.

"I'm going to try downstairs—don't blink!"

"Sure," Leon said, sounding a bit annoyed now. "Just hurry!"

Merlin did so, running along the corridor toward the stairs, where surely there would be someone to hear him shout.

As he turned the corner he saw one gnome sitting on the stairs. Merlin stepped back, blinking—the gnome had disappeared. For a second Merlin wondered where it could have gone to, and that second in which Merlin had to think and turn around was enough time for the gnome to run back down the hall toward the anteroom.

"No, no no!" Merlin shouted as he sprinted back, his eyes fixed on the gnome's frozen foot which was still visible from around the door of the anteroom. If he took his eyes off it—

"Merlin?!" Leon shouted, and Merlin saw him involuntarily glance up. He glanced back down in a hurry, but the gnomes were already closer, glaring at him, their hands outstretched. Some had raised weapons, and were mere inches from his feet. He gasped.

"MERLIN!" he shouted, angry but frightened too, and Merlin bolted back into the room to watch the gnomes just as Leon blinked.


	20. Chapter 20

After cleansing his palette with a stoup of wine and a bit of cheese, Gwaine felt ready to take on the world again after the onion masquerading as an apple. He found another apple as well, just to make sure he wasn't ruined for life, and, though his first bite was tentative, Merlin hadn't enchanted all the apples in Camelot it seemed, so he munched happily away.

Merlin and Leon weren't in Gaius' apothecary when he returned. He'd spent a good long while first composing himself and then flirting with the kitchen staff (a little one-sidedly, admittedly, as they resented his onion breath—another reason for Merlin to pay dearly) and then eating, so he rather expected them to be done with dropping off the gnomes in Arthur's room. It might be a good idea for him to scout out what he'd be dealing with, anyway, if the Queen still wanted him to hide or destroy or conveniently misplace all the creepy little buggers after Leon and Merlin's shopping excursion for even _more._

Gwaine felt something tighten in his stomach, for no reason whatsoever.

But he thought he better go see if he could find Merlin and Leon, anyway.

He took the steps two at a time up to the King's chambers. The walls and doors were thick, and the guard patrol stopped at the end of the corridor a floor below. He nodded at the last one as he passed him, "Eadwig, right?"

"Yes, Sir!"

"All's quiet?"

"Aye, Sir Gwaine. As the grave."

"Oh. Good."

When Gwaine opened the door to the anteroom of the king's chambers, he almost laughed out loud.

"Gwaine!" Merlin cried, sounding relieved.

"Gwaine!" Leon shouted, sounding desperate.

They were surrounded on all sides by broken gnomes. And Gwaine _did _laugh, though this only made the other two look more distressed. "So Gwen's got you in on this, too? I thought I was the only one she trusted crossing the King's pleasure! Hee!"

"This isn't funny, Gwaine!" Merlin shrieked. "They're alive! They're—you've got to keep looking at them! Don't blink!"

"So we're just smashing them, are we?" he grinned still, grabbing one off the table and dropping it to the floor where it shattered.

"GWAINE!"

Gwaine sighed, loath to make himself be serious. Now that it was staring him straight in the face, Gwaine felt more than a little silly and therefore hesitant about believing his own fairy story. Gwaine was exceptionally good at ignoring problems, and it would be nice if this could be one such time. It wouldn't be the first time his talk had preyed on active imaginations, after all—

But Leon looked scared, too.

And now—

"What is that...?"

—he smelled burnt flesh.

Gwaine's eyes widened. He looked at the ground, trying to get all the gnomes in his line of sight. He realized now, suddenly, horribly, that they had drawn a circle around Leon, and were now frozen, but obviously menacing. "Leon, give me your hand!" he demanded, grabbing and yanking Leon clear as he kept his eyes open and down.

"Get behind me, they won't—_um_," Gwaine said: that awkward moment where he had to admit he was _technically _nobility, no matter how hard he tried to deny it. And if the legends about the gnomes were true, well, he'd be just as tasty to them as Leon. So, "Merlin, you keep your eyes on 'em. Leon, we'll smash 'em," he said quickly, to distract from the awkward.

With many a _crash! clang! smash! _things were almost going swimmingly. They had enough eyes to keep the little buggers pinned down, and they worked out a keen system where Merlin, standing on the perimeter, would shout "Blink!" when he needed to blink so Gwaine and Leon could stop the smashing to stare at the gnomes while Merlin blinked his eyes. Gwaine actually began to backpedal, highly doubting that this was what Gwen had had in mind when she asked him to get rid of the creepy statues, but a broom would sort it all out. As the immediate panic and adrenaline faded, his hand even began to hurt. He vaguely wondered how they would explain to Arthur where all the gnomes had gone, and was just formulating what might have been a convincing lie that really would only have gotten Sir Elyan in a very little bit of trouble, when the King himself walked in.

Gwaine tried to look easy about this, since there was no way to make it look good. "Ahh. Just the man we wanted to see," he grinned, leaning on his sword.

Arthur spluttered a bit, and as Leon and Merlin looked up guiltily, Gwaine stepped back to keep the gnomes in his view while he pretended to look chastised by Arthur.

"What the hell are you all _doing_?" Arthur finally managed. "Gwaine, this must be your fault!"

_Oh, of course..._

**...**

Arthur rolled his eyes and moved on, knowing he would get nothing useful out of his most surly knight. "Merlin! Leon!" Arthur barked, assuming his kingly voice that usually worked on them. They both dropped the gnomes they were holding and stood up straight. This helped his mood, but not much. "What the _bloody _hell are you doing?!"

But Merlin and Leon started talking at once, and again Arthur felt compelled to use his kingly voice to get them to shut them up:

"I _thought_ I sent you to _buy _gnomes, not smash them up! Gwaine, is this your idea?—"

"Will you stop it with that?" Gwaine complained.

"Sire, there's a dead man here," Leon added quickly, averting a confrontation.

That at least made Arthur forget the gnomes for a few minutes as he examined the body to the background noise of Gwaine, Leon and Merlin talking over each other and generally making no sense whatsoever. Finally, when he ascertained that this man had been found where he lay without a guard or anyone in sight, he decided he had better put an end to the hysteria.

"...Let me see if I've got this right. You're all saying that my _gnomes _killed this man?"

"Come on, Arthur," Gwaine said, "You've heard the—"

But Arthur wasn't in the mood. "Yes, Gwaine, I was a child once and I am aware of the legend. Now, I don't know how you could have possibly got it into your head that little ceramic men can actually come to life and kill people, but this is ending now. This is Camelot. We are educated individuals that do not get taken in by rural superstition. Did any of you see them come to life and kill this man?"

Merlin cleared his throat. "Well, no, sire, but that's—"

"Then it's ridiculous to just assume that, isn't it? You might as well think that the table did it! If you didn't see them do it, you don't know they did it, and you have no basis for making any kind of claim as to who murdered this man."

"But sire—"

"Quiet." Arthur glared at Leon until he was sure that he wasn't going to speak out of turn again, then turned to look at the body. "However, I'm not going to pretend that this doesn't look a lot like sorcery of some kind. And you do unfortunately have the queen on your side." Also, he couldn't ignore their terrified expressions. Even if their fears were completely ungrounded, it wasn't his choice to decide his subjects' needs. He picked up the four gnomes that were remaining and walked off toward a storage closet. "There," he said, putting them in a chest inside the closet and locking it. "I'll keep them locked in here until this business is sorted. Now, I don't want to hear any more about it." He gave them each a very firm look. Leon still appeared concerned. Merlin glowered. Gwaine rolled his eyes. "It's Friday Knights tonight, isn't it?" he said, trying to change the subject.

"Sire—" but Arthur glared at Leon and he said "Yes, sire," resignedly.

"Well, then I want you all to go on with that. Best not to cause panic, after all. Get this man cleaned up and his family notified. Obviously whoever did this exposed a weak point in our security that I want patched up, and I want a new schematic of the guard shifts on my desk tomorrow morning. Until then, double the guards in this corridor. I will not launch a full-scale witch hunt on one piece of evidence, but do make it known that I am looking for information regarding any suspicious persons observed in this part of the castle this afternoon."

"Yes, sire. I'll have a guest room made up for you and her Highness tonight."

"Oh, never mind that. I'm sure everything will be cleaned up by the time we get back."

"Get back?"

"From your concert," Arthur said, rolling his eyes as he walked off. "Though God only knows how Gwen managed to convince me to go with her. After this little scare I hope all of you plan on playing something a bit more serious..."


	21. Chapter 21

_**A/N:** Hey, long chapter to make up for slow posting! To keep you posted, this adventure is done and the next one has begun, so updates should be pretty regular. Warning: Silly Def Leppard references ahead. No, we're not sorry. _

...

The arrangements for the Friday Knights were a bit more jumbled than usual, and as always, the confusion was primarily caused by Gwaine. His hand still injured from punching a wall (an event that Leon still couldn't bring himself to believe actually happened), Gwaine found himself able to contribute to the band in only two ways: by singing, or by playing the drums. The most experience Gwaine had with playing percussion was banging a tankard on the table to the beat of "Chug! Chug! Chug!" but Leon hoped that drums would put a bit of focus to Gwaine's abundant energy. Leon sang "Tainted Love" first, which had the easiest beat you could find in a chanconette, and Galehaut did a fine job filling in for Gwaine on the bass vielle. After that Elyan sang "Beast of Burden," but out of the corner of his eye Leon could see Gwaine champing at the bit to play something faster. Next up for singing was Lancelot, and Leon had to get out a pick to play the song he had chosen.

_"Oh can't you see you belong to me? How my poor heart aches with every step you take…Every move you make, every vow you break, every smile you fake, every claim you stake, I'll be watching you…"_

Leon was barely able to contain his embarrassment, especially since Lancelot kept giving Gwen meaningful looks as he sang it. Honestly Leon thought it was a relatively harmless song when he suggested it, but clearly he meant more by it than he originally let on. Galehaut plucked at the bass vielle sympathetically beside Lancelot as Gwen got more and more agitated. Lancelot _clearly_ had the best heart of all the knights, and it hurt to see him torturing himself like this.

But Leon wasn't in a position to point fingers about getting overly-sentimental. He sang the next song, one he picked out just recently because he still couldn't get Elaine out of his head, even though he was fairly certain he didn't have much of a chance with her. But it still gave him chills down his spine and when Lancelot's angelic voice aided him in the chorus he found it extremely difficult to not look at Elaine as he sang.

_"I'm in love, I'm in deep yeah, hypnotized, I'm shakin' to my knees…I gotta know tonight if you're alone tonight…can't stop this feelin', can't stop this fire…Oh! I get hysterical—"_

_"—Hysteria!—"_

_"—Oh can you feel it—"_

_"—Do you believe it—"_

_"…Ooh babe…Hysteria when you're near."_

It was certainly true—he fell to pieces whenever she was around. As much as he liked her, what was the point in pursuing her if he couldn't even speak coherently to her? He wasn't comfortable around her at all, even if he did want to be beside her all the time. She was leaving at the end of the month, and that wasn't enough time to learn how to trust himself around her, not at all.

"That's enough of _that_ sort of thing, I think," Galehaut said when Leon finished. "If we're going for the sentimental we might as well have fun doing it. Come on, Lance, get your rebec! It's _my _turn."

Lance laughed at Galehaut's unwavering optimism and played the trill opening note of "Foolin'", and Leon quickly started the introductory melody. Galehaut's voice, though not quite as stunning as Lancelot's, certainly had more energy and playfulness to it. Leon thankfully made it through the entire lute solo without botching a single note, which certainly put him into better spirits.

Still—the beat seemed to lag somewhat from how they had practiced it.

"I think the one-armed drummer might be holding us back," Percival said, putting down the cornetto he had been wailing on. It was more a joke than a real complaint, but Gwaine, in his usual practice of taking things personally and getting disproportionately offended for all of five seconds, tossed the drumstick away in a kind of fit.

"At least _I'm _not deaf!" he said, "I was getting tired of these old pigskins anyway. Move over, 'Hauttie, I'll sing the next one!"

"Excuse _me_, but Sir Leon got to sing two, I don't see why you think you can just muscle your way in—"

But Gwaine rarely took no for an answer, and Galehaut eventually left in a kind of huff that only noblemen can properly achieve as Gwaine smugly took center stage.

...

Merlin had hoped that if he beat everyone to the pub, they wouldn't notice that he still had a fine coating of flour adhering to his shirt and hair. But after that whole thing with the gnomes and the dead antiquarian and subsequent demands from a certain king that everything be cleaned up _right now_, he'd not had time to go back and do a spell to remove the flour. In fact, he was running late, and so he was the last to arrive.

He was happy, after the long day, to plunk down in the seat next to Gwen, well out of the way and where he couldn't be harassed into getting up for at least the next half hour. He noticed that Arthur had taken the corner seat on Gwen's other side, where he couldn't possibly get out unless everyone else also got up, and that would just be too much trouble. Gwen and Arthur both glanced over at him when he practically flopped down onto the bench.

"Nice shirt, Merlin," Arthur said with deceptive innocence, and Merlin leaned forward to look at him around Gwen before rolling his eyes.

"Is that…" Gwen started, and Arthur and Merlin both looked at her, one grinning like a fool and the other looking entirely too deadpan to be sincerely bothered.

"It's flour. Ask him where it came from," Arthur said, sounding like a gleeful five-year-old, and Gwen glanced from king to manservant with raised eyebrows. Merlin snorted.

"There were flour beetles in the—" he started, just for humor's sake, and, sure enough, he was interrupted by Arthur.

"Gwaine dumped a bucket of flour on him. They're having a prank war," he laughed.

"A prank war? With Gwaine?" Gwen asked, looking slightly concerned, "That doesn't sound like it can possibly end well." Having heard this sentiment several times by now, Merlin just grinned and shook his head a bit ruefully, though whether he agreed or disagreed with Gwen was unclear. Up on stage, Gwaine succeeded in chasing almost everyone else off stage so he could be the center of attention, and as those who were singing or playing converged on the table, Arthur and Gwen both stood to make room and then wandered off toward the bar. Merlin took over Arthur's corner seat and shortly found himself sitting with Lancelot, Galehaut, and Leon. Lancelot clapped him on the shoulder as he sat down and then sneezed at the inevitable puff of flour.

"Merlin, why are you covered in flour?" he asked in a bit of confusion.

"Gwaine. Prank war. I've already told them it's a bad idea," Leon answered before Merlin could say a word, sounding very put upon.

"It's just a prank war. We'll be fine," Merlin reassured the eldest knight, while Lancelot and Galehaut both looked at him uncertainly, clearly doubting the wisdom of this sentiment. Lancelot looked like he was about to say something, but he was cut off as Gwaine started singing, and they all turned to at least pretend to pay fleeting attention to the knight.

_"...Luck and intuition, play the cards with spades to start  
And after she's been hooked I'll play the one that's on her heart  
Oh, o-o-oh oh, o-o-o-o-o-oh  
I'll get her hot, show her what I've got…"_

They all turned back around and fell to talking amongst themselves for a moment. Leon and Lancelot were immersed in some discussion of battle tactics or record-keeping (which even Merlin had to admit was boring) and Galehaut was left out, so after the briefest of forlorn looks at Lance, he turned to Merlin, who grinned his usual what-I-was-paying-attention-really grin.

"Was that Arthur and Gwen who just got up?" he asked, and Merlin nodded, glancing after the pair of them.

"Yes, I think Arthur got bored of bothering me about the state of my clothes…" Merlin remarked.

"He's quite fond of her," Galehaut commented, with just the briefest of glances at Lancelot, who caught him glancing at him and grinned briefly before going back to his conversation with Leon. Merlin wasn't sure who Galehaut was actually referring to with that "he," but he chose to assume it was Arthur.

"Well, they are married, so… that's probably a good thing," he laughed, and Galehaut's momentary frown told him everything he needed to know about the assumption he'd made. Not Arthur, then, which left Lancelot. Merlin chose not to say anything about that.

_"...And baby when it's love, if its not rough it isn't fun…" _Gwaine sang.

There was awkward silence as Merlin tried to calculate Galehaut's reaction and Galehaut looked almost forlornly between Gwen and Lancelot before turning back to the conversation.

"I don't know what he sees in her," Galehaut commented vaguely, and Merlin's eyebrows both went up.

"What Arthur sees in Gwen?" he asked, slightly aghast. Galehaut shrugged, and then nodded.

"Would you like a list?" Merlin responded. Gwen had been one of the first friends he'd made in this place. He could have listed off what Arthur—what _anyone_, really—might see in the kind-hearted, sincere, servant-turned-queen without even having to think about it very hard. Galehaut just huffed a put-upon sigh and continued glaring at the queen in a way that made Merlin kind of want to tell him to knock it off, even though he suspected it was jealousy talking, and not outright malice.

"No, thank you. I'd find it hard to believe, anyway. No one… _no one _can possibly be as perfect as everyone seems to think she is," he said sullenly with a nod in Gwen's general direction. "She must be hiding something." Stunned, Merlin just sat there awkwardly, really not enjoying the direction in which this conversation had gone.

"I wouldn't let the knights hear you say that," he said, finally, thinking perhaps the knight should be warned before he ran his mouth off and got himself in trouble. There were very few people of whom the knights were universally protective, and their queen was definitely one of them. Merlin had no doubt that things would get very ugly, very quickly if one of them overheard the newest knight bad-mouthing Gwen, no matter the sentiment behind the words.

"She's not even that pretty," Galehaut was saying as Gwaine and the others sat down, Gwaine gulping at his beer.

"Who's ugly?" Gwaine asked amiably, looking around excitedly. He happened to like ugly girls. In his experience, the ugly ones were better bedmates because they invariably tried harder.

Gwaine was sure he misheard the next thing out of Galehaut's mouth, so he asked for clarification.

"I said, I was talking about Gwen. I cannot see why Lancelot—"

"Yeah, I heard you the first time," Gwaine grumbled, as he tried to shift the conversation to another topic and turned his shoulder away from Galehaut. "Soooo, Merlin? Why do you still have flour on your shirt?"

"And she treats him like dirt. I've never heard a nice word come out of her mouth," Galehaut went on.

Everyone looked uncomfortably into their beers, trying to determine how best to handle the situation, since changing the subject wasn't working, and knights did not get into tavern brawls. Luckily, Lancelot was off in the corner tuning his stupid crumhorn, otherwise he'd probably be pissed to hear this. But Elyan was here, and he was twitching, and: "Hey, you want to knock it off? That's my sister you're talking about."

"Then why don't you control her more?"

"Sir Galehaut—" Elyan tried again, growling.

"No, no, let him get this off his chest," K encouraged, with an unreadable frown.

"She is clearly leading him on in the most cruel manner I've ever witnessed!" Galehaut went on, glad to have someone listening to him.

Gwaine groaned inwardly. Was the poor bastard drunk? Gwaine didn't think so. He'd need a better excuse than _that _for this behavior. But, still, Gwaine tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, and blinked.

"Wait, we're still talking about Guinevere, here, right? Like, the _Queen of Camelot_?" he said carefully, almost warningly, to give Galehaut a fair chance to reconsider what he was actually saying and maybe, if he wasn't a total idiot, to retract it...

"The Queen of _Strumpets_," Galehaut grumbled into his beer.

"Gee, Hauttie, tell us how you really feel!" K said with a laugh. But he was the only one who found this funny.

Gwaine stood up. His chair scraped across the floor loudly.

"Would you like to say that again, Sir Galehaut?" he asked.

"Gwaine..." Leon warned, but Gwaine ignored him.

"No, no, I want to hear him say it again, or decide he's being a fool and rescind it."

Galehaut waved his beer flamboyantly. "The Queen of Strumpets? I'd say that all day if—"

"STAND UP," Gwaine snarled, and the fire in his eyes slowly quieted the room around them, so when Galehaut slowly, eyes narrowed, less afraid and more concerned, got to his feet to stand over Gwaine, most of the bar was watching.

Gwaine wasn't sure exactly what came next. His instincts screamed at him that a broken glass bottle to the face would be the wisest tactic, but something niggling in the back of his mind called "chivalry" said something else. Wasn't a glove supposed to be involved? Gwaine wasn't sure where his had got to, so he snatched Percy's off the table and threw it down brazenly in front of Galehaut.

The room gasped collectively.

Galehaut had the _audacity _to smirk! Gwaine was going to enjoy teaching him a lesson. He eyed the glove sidelong. "You're not serious."

"Deadly," Gwaine said.

Galehaut raised his eyebrows. "To the death?"

Gwaine shook his head. "Nah. Just til I it pleases me to leave off kicking your pretty little arse."

Galehaut gulped a bit, but to his credit, picked up the glove. "Is this to be a brawl or a duel?"

"I don't even care. I'll get you one way or another, and teach you a thing or two about manners, probably won't even have to kill you—"

"Gwaine!" Arthur charged up. "Galehaut, what on earth are _you?—Gwaine!"_ he said again, exasperated. It was a fine thing Arthur couldn't get a full sentence out, because Gwaine didn't want to talk to him, either. Why wasn't _he _fighting this duel? Why wasn't Elyan? Was he the only one man enough to teach this fruitcake a lesson about how Gwen was the most perfect creature in all of Albion and he better watch his step if he happened to be too stupid to agree?

"You better take your wife home, sire. With a face like that, she'd launch a thousand ships to war, apparently," Gwaine said, turned, and went back to the bar as Arthur turned to Leon for an explanation.

"_Someone tell me what the hell is going on_!" Arthur bellowed, though clearly he expected no one else to answer besides Leon.

"A challenge has been issued, sire," Leon said. He wasn't entirely sure whether he should explain why the challenge had been made, but Gwen, watching the scene awkwardly at Arthur's side, appeared to understand exactly what had transpired. He gave Gwen a pleading look.

"It is within their rights to duel if they want to," she said, "Isn't it? How does all this work?"

Arthur tried to explain. "Well, if a challenge has been issued, and Galehaut's accepted, they'll need to designate seconds."

"Someone uninvolved—like Lancelot, perhaps?"

"Yes, that's the idea—"

"Yes," Galehaut said, "Lancelot du Lac will be my second!"

The knights turned to where Lancelot sat on the far end of the table. He had been tuning his crumhorn and thus heard nothing of the altercation. There was a comedic honk from the crumhorn as Galehaut's shout disturbed him. "Eh?—oh, yes, if it is required of me—but, here now, what's all this about—?"

"Never mind that," Gwen chimed in quickly. "You're going to be Galehaut's second." Gwen did not wait for anyone to reply to that before she crossed over to Gwaine and said, "Why don't you take Sir K as your second?"

"Whoa, whoa—wait a minute!" Leon practically chased Gwen over to where Gwaine stood and interrupted her whispering into Gwaine's ear. "Excuse me, your Highness, but are you out of your mind? You know how Sir K fights—Galehaut was out of line but K is not the sort of person that should act as a second." He turned to Gwaine. "I'll be your second."

Gwen shook her head. "If you're Gwaine's second, Lancelot won't have any reason to worry."

Leon knotted his brow. "Why should Lancelot need a reason to worry?"

"Because, Leon," Gwaine said, "Galehaut fancies him."

"What? Don't be—"

Leon was interrupted by a shouting match between Lancelot and Galehaut. Sir K was standing nearby, looking a lot less guilty than he should.

"I beg your pardon?!" Lancelot was saying.

"I didn't mean to cause trouble," Sir K said, "But, Sir Galehaut, you didn't exactly try to keep your feelings secret, and I was just repeating what I heard, since Lancelot asked—"

Galehaut shrugged, but appeared very flustered. "I only meant, Lancelot, that Guinevere is—"

"I know what you meant! How could you have said something like that?—"

"I was defending you! Besides, you already agreed—"

"You know I won't go back on my word, but if you talk about her in that way again I'll challenge you to a duel myself!"

Lancelot stormed from the tavern. Galehaut sulked for a few seconds, then followed him out. Now that Gwaine mentioned it, the signs were easy to read.

"Oh," he said.

"Don't you see?" Gwen continued in a whisper. "This is a perfect opportunity to edge them together in the right direction. If _you're_ Gwaine's second, Lancelot can still be angry without worrying about the fact that Galehaut tried to defend his honor.…"

"Defend his honor? But he called you a—" Leon knew he wasn't going to continue, and Gwen dutifully interrupted him.

"Never mind what he called me," she said. "He was just trying to say that Lancelot's love is misguided, which it is." Gwen's unbreakable determination to see the best in everyone came through yet again, and when she put it like that it sounded fairly legitimate: everyone tended to blame Lancelot for loving a married woman, which they of course should, but to a stranger sympathetic to Lancelot already, it was in fact pretty noble to try defending the man who no one else would defend.

Alright, it could only really make sense in Guinevere's all-loving, overly-accepting mind, but Leon couldn't argue with her of all people.

"If Galehaut is put in some real danger," she continued, "and with Lancelot watching, then perhaps…"

"Well?"

"…Well, it's not the best plan in the world, but I don't have much to work with at the moment," Gwen said, getting annoyed. "And it's a start, anyway."

"A duel isn't exactly the best way to gain true love," Leon said, and, as Gwaine started to open his mouth, "This isn't funny, Gwaine."

"No, of course it isn't," Gwaine said. "You know what else isn't funny? That my tankard has been empty for a full five minutes!"

And with that he wandered off to get more ale, again attempting to extract himself from the crowd that seemed determined to follow him. A moment later Arthur appeared and fixed Gwen with a look. Leon had never seen the "we need to talk" expression on the male counterpart of a married couple before, but he saw it then, and Arthur and Gwen walked off whispering at each other.

…Which left plenty of room for Sir K to saunter over.

"You'll have to explain all this dueling business to me, I'm afraid," K said with a smile. "Fighting a duel is not something I'm particularly familiar with."

"You seem to be very familiar with starting one," Leon said, happy he actually succeeded in coming up with an acceptable comeback. "But then you always were a good mixer."

"Oh, my dear Leon, don't be so upset! I only do it for the same reason I do anything else, which is the same reason that I would, say, marry the Lady Elaine, or bring down Camelot to its very foundations, or hide a baby scorpion in your boot." He grinned and laughed as if it was all a big joke. "I just like to have fun!"

Leon tried to not consider these as K laughed into the last of his tankard of ale, since it was obvious he just spouted a few things off carefully calculated to make Leon's blood boil. The man was insane! Camelot and the Knights had had nothing but trouble since he arrived with that stupid gnome….

"Sir K," Leon said as K lowered his tankard, "You wouldn't happen to remember where you got that gnome you gave the King, would you?"

"Oh, that old thing? No, I don't recall. I hope it's not defective in any way."

"No, it, er...seems to be doing the job splendidly."

"Well, that's a relief. Now, I think there's an ale over there with my name on it…"

Leon tried to read K's expression for something, anything that might give away, for instance, some secret plan to take over Camelot using gnomes and a silver tongue, but he gleaned nothing from K's smiling face before it turned toward the bar.

When all parties involved had either gone off in a huff or returned to the bar or sat back down, Merlin still stood there blinking and trying to make sense of what, exactly, had just transpired. Had Gwaine _actually _just challenged Galehaut to a duel? Merlin turned and looked at his friend as the knight returned to the bar, eyebrows raised slightly in concern. It wasn't that Gwaine couldn't generally handle himself in a duel, but then…mistakes happened. And Sir K acting as his second? Merlin understood Gwen's logic, even if he still thought it was a horrible idea, but that seemed like tempting fate in all kinds of dangerous ways.

Merlin was about to go to the bar and talk to Gwaine, but as if he'd been listening in on Merlin's thoughts, Sir K came sauntering past, clearly also on his way over to the bar.

"Merlin!" he said loudly as he clapped a hand over Merlin's shoulder, causing him to nearly jump out of his boots. "How are you, my friend?" the king's cousin asked, and Merlin grinned to hide the thought that'd just flashed right through his head—_No friend of yours, certainly._

"Sir?" he asked instead, wondering what Sir K wanted this time. His armor was already clean, his horse was probably more well-taken-care-of than it had been in years, and his rooms were clean. Merlin knew, because he'd taken five minutes to go check earlier in the afternoon.

"'Sir'? Come now, you don't call any of the other knights 'Sir'. I heard you call Arthur 'clotpole'. Why the formality? My cousin didn't put you up to it, did he?" Sir K asked, and, convinced he was once again making himself look stupid, Merlin just shrugged.

"No, no one did. I just thought…" he said, trailing off. Sir K flashed that disarming grin that Merlin didn't trust as far as he could throw the owner, and Merlin again wondered what, exactly, K wanted, or if he was just trying to throw him off guard, or perhaps if he was going to try and get him to admit he had magic again. Merlin started looking for some avenue of escape.

"Well, don't think too hard. Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself," Sir K joked, his voice returning to a normal speaking volume. This sort of joke was funny when Arthur made it, and would have ordinarily been met with some equally cutting remark, but it wasn't half as amusing coming from Sir K, and Merlin bristled slightly. "So, Merlin, still haven't told Arthur about your magic?" he asked, and Merlin gaped. Was this man really idiot enough to mention magic in the middle of a crowded tavern? He wiped the look off his face and tried to look completely disinterested.

"I have not idea—" he started. K interrupted him.

"'What you're talking about,' yes, I've heard that. Honestly, Merlin, do you think I'm stupid? That's not very kind," K said, and he smiled. It was the smile of a snake. And this man was going to be Gwaine's second? This was a horrible idea…

"No, Sir K, never stupid. Likewise, I am not so stupid as to break the laws of Camelot," he said, but he was bad at lying, and his eyes skittered nervously off to the side as K stared at him.

"Ah, well, he'll find out eventually, right? Are you planning on telling him about the dragon, too, or are you afraid that might be too much? It would certainly be a shame if any of the knights found out, after what that beast did to the castle. And their friends. He killed a great many knights, didn't he?" he asked, glancing over to Leon. Merlin took the slightest step back. Well, yes, that would be awful. Leon would hate him forever. Gwaine might even hate him, for that one. But apparently K wasn't done talking yet. With another one of those snake-smiles, he added, "Then again, I imagine there are others who might like to know that Camelot has a sorcerer, wouldn't you think? A friend of mine, actually, might be quite interested, especially if she knew who it was. With that sort of information, she could cause… all sorts of trouble, I should think."

Merlin was done with any pretense of affability with Arthur's cousin. He glared at him. Was he actually threatening to tell an enemy of Camelot who Merlin really was? That would be a disaster, especially if it ever got back to Morgana. Unless… _She could cause all sorts of trouble,_he'd said. Surely he wasn't actually talking about Morgana. The thought was enough to make the color go from Merlin's face, and he knew that any pretense of denial he'd been keeping up was now rendered utterly pointless.

And Sir K found it absolutely hilarious. He laughed and clapped Merlin on the shoulder again.

"Merlin, the look on your face! It's comical, really. You're a funny one! Thank you for the laugh. Really, thank you," he said, and then turned around and hailed Gwaine, practically bounding across the tavern to speak with the knight about something that would no doubt be bad for someone or something's health, if his behavior so far this evening was any indication. Merlin watched him go. He wanted to say something to Gwaine, but he couldn't. He could've said something to Gaius or Lancelot, but what could they do? Tell him to be careful? Arthur wouldn't listen to either of them any more than he'd listen to Merlin. And he couldn't say anything to Leon, who would have believed the man's ill-intent, because Leon didn't know he could do magic. In short, no one he could tell could do anything about Sir K's threats, and anyone who could do anything about Sir K he couldn't tell. Wonderful.

...

"Are we sure this is a good idea?" Gwaine had settled with his elbows on the bar while the others finally left him alone to sort things out, when Gwen approached him, sweetly apprehensive as she always looked (especially when she wanted something from him).

Gwen sidled up next to him demurely. "Well, we've got to do something for Lancelot, don't you agree?"

"No," Gwaine said sullenly. "I don't care if he gets himself sacked."

Gwen pursed her lips. "I think you do care, Gwaine."

Gwaine answered that with a swig of beer.

"At any rate, _I _care," she said, as if this settled it, and Gwaine sighed.

"What do you want from me?"

"The first part's easy."

"Awesome."

"I need you to teach Galehaut a lesson."

Gwaine almost choked on his beer laughing. "Is the Queen getting vengeful?"

"Oh, certainly not," she said, with a small wink that said otherwise, "But I do hope it might evoke...protective instincts in Sir Lancelot."

Gwaine snorted.

"And then, when you beat him—though I'd appreciate it if you _didn't _kill him—"

"Aw, Gwen, you're no fun," Gwaine teased.

"—I want you to let Lancelot beat you."

Now Gwaine did spit out his beer. And that was alcohol abuse! "You want me to what?"

"Let him defend Galehaut, and let him win."

"But—" Gwaine stammered, "but that means—"

"Let him win, Gwaine. Do not make me insult your prowess by suggesting he might win, anyway."

Gwaine narrowed his eyes. "Ugh," he groaned, "lady!" he grumbled. "_Mi_lday," he added, petulantly.

"Thank you, Sir Gwaine," Gwen said, squeezing his arm. "I knew I could rely on you."

"Yeah, whatever," Gwaine said mildly, as he watched her leave, arm in arm with the king.

He finished his beer as K sidled up next to him with a new one. "Perfect timing," Gwaine said with a side grin.

"Not the only thing perfect about me," K said with a wink and a chuckle.

There was a comfortable silence between them.

"You don't mind being my second?" Gwaine asked. "You know I haven't even actually seen you fight, you might be rubbish."

"Oh, yeah," K laughed. "That's me, I'm rubbish at hand-to-hand. I'll be useless out there."

"Ha," Gwaine said. Then, "Thanks, K."

There was another silence as the two men considered the scene and considered their beers.

"Why does Merlin have flour on his shirt?" K asked, by way of changing the subject.

"Ha!" Gwaine chortled gleefully. "He's an idiot and challenged _me _to a prank war."

"Ha-ha! And here I thought he was smart," K chuckled.

"You thought wrong."

"I feel sorry for him. It's hardly a fair fight."

"Oh, it's fair," Gwaine assured him. "Like you said, he's smart. When he wants to be. I owe him good for the last one."

"Have you tried the wax on the soles of his shoes one? That's a classic."

Gwaine thought he couldn't love K more. "That's priceless! Wax on the bottom of his shoes! Next round's on me, mate, that deserves a drink!"


	22. Chapter 22

Gaius often scolded Merlin for darting around as if it would simply take too long to _walk_everywhere, and his mother had constantly admonished him as a child to slow down before he ran into someone or something. But for all his mother's nagging and his mentor's scolding, Merlin had never learned to walk everywhere. When you were a servant to the king and an assistant to the court physician, you didn't get to walk everywhere. So he was in a habit of walking only when he had to.

He had to walk, however, through the crowded hallways and paths of mid-Saturday-morning Camelot, and he had to walk with the plates of food to take to Gwen and Arthur for their breakfast. He was late, partially because he'd hit a patch of something slippery on the way over and nearly thrown both plates while trying to catch himself.

"Why is it that you're always late on Saturdays, Merlin?" Arthur asked as he kicked the half-open door the rest of the way open with his toe. Merlin set the food down on a table and grinned.

"I used to be on time, if you recall, but you kept throwing things at me when I woke you up early on the weekends, so I stopped," he answered, not missing even a beat.

"No, I threw things at you because you couldn't resist chattering on at length about everything my knights had been up to at the tavern the previous night," Arthur answered, wandering over and snatching a bread roll before wandering off back across the room.

"Yes, well, you're the prat who was making me get up before dawn on a Saturday just to deal with your smiling face," Merlin countered. He saw the bread roll sailing at his head from the corner of his eye and turned to catch it, setting it neatly on a plate. Gwen laughed, and king and manservant both turned to look at her.

"If you're done playing with the food?" she asked, and took both plates to set at the big table where Arthur had currently scattered papers and figures and a tunic that needed washing, and shoved all of it out of the way to make room for the two of them to eat.

"Gwen, I can—" Merlin started, because that was _his _job, and she just leveled a look at him before sitting down.

"I know you _can_, but I don't mind. And you should be off to eat your own breakfast," she answered. Merlin had to admit that this was true. He usually at before he brought the food here, but he'd raced out of Gaius' without so much as glancing at the loaf of bread on their table. He flashed a thankful grin at the queen.

"And take the laundry with you," Arthur said as he wandered to the table. Merlin rolled his eyes and gathered most of it, then almost dropped all of it when Arthur chucked the tunic that had been on the table across the room at him. "But eat first. We can't have servants fainting all over from lack of food, even if it is their own fault for oversleeping. I'm sure your thick skull would crack the floor, and that would be a mess," Arthur said, but Merlin grinned again behind the armful of clothes at Arthur's quickly disguised, joking concern, and left.

He usually took the short flight of stairs just down the hall from Arthur and Gwen's rooms two at a time, that being quicker than one at a time, and his feet knew them whether or not he could see them. So even though he was carrying an armful of clothes, when he reached the top step he bounded past the second to land on the third.

With an ungainly flailing that threw clothes everywhere, he felt his foot skid right off the step. It missed every subsequent step, as did his other foot, and his startled squawk turned into a yelp as his tailbone hit the steps and knocked the air right out of him. He threw his right hand back to catch himself before his head could likewise hit a step. Something—hopefully not a step, because he'd never live that down—cracked and he skidded the rest of the way down the stairs and to the bottom of them, head thunking the last of them, but only enough to cause a bruise. Dimly, over the sounds of himself clattering down the stairs, he heard someone laughing. It sounded suspiciously like Sir K, and he wondered if he was really so lucky as to fall down the stairs in front of the newest knight.

"Did you see that? He threw the clothes everywhere! Perhaps someone should tell Arthur is manservant is sleeping on the job," the voice continued, and Merlin amended his previous thought. Yes, he really was that lucky. That was definitely Sir K hovering just around the next corner, having a laugh at Merlin's clumsy expense.

He sat in a sprawled heap at the bottom of the stairs for a moment without moving, trying to process what, exactly had just happened. Clothes, thrown when he'd reached back to stop his fall with his arm, were scattered about haphazardly. For just a split second, he felt nothing at all. His head didn't hurt, even though he knew he'd bumped it on a stair and would have a bruise, and as the breath that'd been knocked out of his lungs shuddered back in, he twitched fingers and toes to make sure he could. His legs were fine, and his left arm… but when he moved the fingers on his right hand, it caused a sharp, stinging, startling pain to shoot all the way from fingertips to shoulder. Biting off a yelp so it came out as a strangled groan, he moved to cradle the arm protectively against his chest, which really didn't help at all, unsurprisingly. Very quickly, he surmised that the crack moments earlier had not, in fact, been a step, but very probably one of the bones in his arm. It at least hadn't been his head, which had certainly been a possibility given the situation, but that wasn't a whole lot of comfort just at the moment. And why was K still laughing as if he thought this was a hilarious joke and Merlin was just faking? His voice rounded the corner, but Merlin was looking at his arm and didn't hear him until he actually spoke. When he glanced up, he was surprised to see not just Sir K, but standing slightly behind him, Gwaine. At least his friend looked significantly less amused than Sir K, but still… he sincerely hoped this hadn't been partly his idea, this "watch Merlin fall down stairs" thing. It was a stupid idea, and curse it, it _hurt_.

"Gwaine? What are you—" Merlin started to ask, but K interrupted him, and Merlin's look of pained confusion turned to a glare as he looked up at the king's cousin. For a split second, he seriously considered doing something like knocking him on his face by yanking the floor right out from under him, but this was a rather commonly used corridor and he was trying to avoid actually using magic in front of Sir K, just on principle. So he settled for glaring at K instead, pointedly ignoring Gwaine for the moment.

"Merlin! It looks like you dropped something. Are you taking a break already? Or did you just forget how to walk down stairs?" he asked jokingly, completely ignoring that Merlin was still hunched over his arm, teeth grinding. If he stayed angry at Sir K, he thought it might distract him from the throbbing pain in his arm, but that… wasn't working quite as well as he'd hoped. Sir K laughed, both at his own joke and Merlin's not-so-surprisingly-ineffective glare. "You just never fail to amuse me," he added.

"You should walk away, Sir K," Merlin commented through his teeth, which only seemed to amuse Sir K further.

"Or what? You'll make me? With the magic you refuse to admit you have?" he asked, and Merlin realized he had no answer to this. Instead, he dropped his furious glare and rolled his eyes, and waited for K to get bored of tormenting him and go away so he could somehow get the clothes cleaned up and limp over to Gaius' to get his arm taken care of.

**...**

Few things would induce Gwaine to wake up early. Getting Merlin back for that apple stunt was certainly going to be one of them.

He hadn't counted on Sir K's aid, but was glad to have it, as beeswax proved to be hard to steal from the candlestick maker without backup. Also, Merlin was generally a light sleeper.

Not to mention all of this had to happen well before dawn, as Merlin was an early riser. Gwaine opted to just not go to bed, albeit that he had a duel the next day. Nothing that a lot of strong tea wouldn't fix. They even had the perfect hiding spot just outside Arthur's room. Yes, everything was going to plan.

Until Merlin fell down the stairs.

Stupidly, Gwaine didn't see that one coming. He realized, in this single, horrible moment that seemed to last a lifetime, that he hadn't thought the entire thing through at all.

Which was why his mind didn't clear until Merlin had already walked—limped—away. K was still laughing—K who somehow knew about Merlin's magic—and looked at Gwaine expectantly.

And Gwaine realized something else.

Sir K was a bastard.

"Gwaine! What a prank!" K laughed, clapping him on the back. "This will surely go down in the annals of history!"

Gwaine barely found his voice. "Don't," he ground out.

"Don't what? You ought to be congratulated! It worked out perfectly."

Gwaine shook off K's embrace. "He got _hurt_, Sir K. It's not funny." A cold wave of fear gripped him, and before he knew it, he was following Merlin to Gaius' apothecary. He had to see what the damage was. He had to—

K grabbed his arm again, still laughing. "But Sir Gwaine, his _face—_"

Gwaine actually did not register what his body was doing until K was lying on his back on the ground, holding his face. The spike of pain in his still-injured fist was nothing compared to the rage that flooded him.

"My friend's pain is _never _for your amusement, Sir K."

Sir K scrambled to his feet. "The King will hear of this!" he snarled as he held the growing bruise on his jaw, though he was somehow still smiling, as Gwaine advanced on him again. "Not only of this, but of how _you _caused his servant great injury!"

Gwaine stopped. His fist hurt. His heart hurt.

K was smiling.

"You should walk away, Sir Gwaine," he said.

So Gwaine did. When he was out of sight of K, his anger gave way to deep concern, and he broke into a run. He didn't stop until he arrived at the physician's quarters, throwing the door wide to see Gaius inspecting Merlin's arm.

At the door, words left him again, and he paused, gulping like a guppy.

"Come to gloat?" Merlin scowled.

Gwaine gulped. "Merlin, I—" he tried, and stammered for a few more moments in mixed anguish and embarrassment. God in heaven, he was an idiot!

Gaius coughed. "If you are just going to stand there, Gwaine, you can bring me that bottle of ointment on the table," he pointed.

Gwaine's legs and arms worked, apparently. Well, except for the one hand he was apparently to determined to not let heal, but that was a small price to pay as long as K sported a puffy lip. He crossed the room and handed Gaius the bottle.

Merlin hissed as Gaius manipulated his arm, and that spurred him to attempt words:

"Jesus, Merlin, I'm so sorry, I—I didn't mean for-I wasn't thinking—"

Leon burst into the room: "Gwaine! Do you recall you have a duel in five minutes? If you are not there on time then you forfeit!"

Arthur charged in after him: "Sir Gwaine! Why on earth did you strike my cousin? And why do you no longer want Sir K as your second? And what the hell did you do to my servant?" he cried, his voice going up at the end as he rushed to Merlin's side, in a rare moment of tenderness.

Gwaine grimaced. The answer required either an hour's explanation, or none at all.

Not that an explanation would excuse anything.

"I...I'm sorry, okay?" he said, and brushed past Arthur and Leon and stalked out of the room with, "I'll see you at the lists."

"Gwaine!" Arthur barked. "You need a second, the Code demands—"

"Damn the Code!" Gwaine finally exploded, rounding on his King. "_You _be my damned second if you're so keen, it's your wife's honor I'm defending!" The room was suddenly silent. "I will be on the field, and if anyone lets that Kilhwch in my sight, I'll—"

"You'll what, Sir Gwaine?" K asked mildly, appearing in front of him. It was really only Leon's hand on his shoulder that kept him from flying at the smug blonde knight. "After all, _you _applied wax to the soles of the king's servant's shoes. I have no quarrel with you, whatever you may feel toward me, and yet hope to stand by you to defend the Queen's honor."

Gwaine glared at K, then wheeled around to look at Leon, and Arthur, and Gaius and finally Merlin, whom he couldn't even bring himself to look at. Gwaine really wanted nothing more than for the earth to swallow him up, or at least snuff everyone else off the face of the planet, or at least go back to a time before he ever listened to K, or even met K, or possibly, before Gwaine was even born.

Yeah, maybe if he had never been born. That might be good.

Leon looked from Gwaine to Merlin. Now that the inevitable adrenaline was wearing off, Merlin's face was becoming more pale, and his glare was becoming more of a grimace. It was Arthur's responsibility to take care of his own servant, but Leon couldn't help feeling responsible for him, too.

He could try to give Gwaine some room to speak, but what good would that do? Sir K was a sneaky little devil, and Leon had no trouble believing that K instigated this particularly dangerous prank, but it would do no good to accuse him here, when Gwaine was unfortunately equally to blame. Battles had to be chosen carefully, especially with Sir K.

"I think, sire, that a game just went a bit too far," Leon said. "Perhaps we should give Gaius some room to work."

"Yes, thank you, Sir Leon," Gaius said stuffily. "That would be nice."

Sir K smiled, conceding the win to Leon, and bowed at Merlin with a, "Don't worry, you'll be lifting laundry baskets again in no time," before he left.

"Gwaine?" Leon said, indicating that he should follow him out. Gwaine threw a regretful glance back at Merlin before they left. Thankfully, now that the audience was gone Gwaine became a bit more vocal.

"I didn't mean to! I didn't want him to get hurt, it was an accident! Do you think I—that I would ever— And K! That bloody snake—he _laughed _when Merlin was clearly hurt! He gave me the stupid idea in the first place!"

"I told you that Sir K was not to be trusted," Leon said simply. "But it was you that put the wax on his shoes."

Gwaine said nothing, but sniffed and wiped a hand across his face angrily, and then nodded, looking down. Leon turned and tried to take his shoulder with more sympathy than warning, and Gwaine didn't shrug him off.

"Accidents happen, Gwaine," he said. "Be glad Merlin didn't get seriously injured. Anyway, right now you have more important things to deal with—"

"He _was _seriously injured, and I don't think _anything _is half as bloody stupidly important!" Gwaine said petulantly.

"I believe it would be a conflict of interest for the King to assume K's place as your second," Leon continued firmly, "but I'll be your second if you need—"

Gwaine cut him off. "No." Gwaine glanced away, then said, "I need you to make sure Merlin's alright. I'll ask Elyan or something."

"Good. Gwen is Elyan's sister, after all. And of course I'll make sure Merlin's alright, but I'm sure he's made of stern stuff." Leon took the charge happily.

When he returned to the apothecary Leon found Arthur still with Merlin, and Gaius wrapping the last of the bandages around Merlin's arm.

"It won't be comfortable, but at lest it'll keep your shoulder in place," Gaius said.

Merlin shifted in the tight wrappings as Arthur measured out a honey-colored liquid into a glass. "Now, I want you to drink all of this," he said, handing Merlin the glass.

Merlin took it uncertainly. "What is it?"

"It's good!" Arthur said, a bit too jovially. When Merlin raised an eyebrow he added, "Well, it'll be funny to see you drunk, anyway."

Merlin took a sip and made a face. "Eugh! It's like—acid death!"

"It'll put hair on your chest!" Arthur insisted.

"And soil!" Merlin said, peering at the liquid with extreme reticence.

"It's only scotch, Merlin," Leon said. "It's good!"

"Well, then you drink it!"

Leon took a sniff of it and stared at Arthur. "You're giving him _fifteen year_?"

"I thought he'd be grateful," Arthur said, equally mystified. "And it'll take the pain away, so—_Mer_lin!"

"I'll drink it later!" Merlin said, already out the door, leaving Leon with the scotch and Arthur shaking his head.

"Well, I was going to give him the day off," Arthur said. "But I suppose he—hey!" Arthur snatched the glass of scotch away from Leon before he could take a second drink. "Come on, we'd better go make sure that Gwaine and Galehaut don't kill each other."

They found Gwaine, K, and Galehaut on the field, surrounded by a small crowd. Leon was not the first one to notice the important missing person.

"Where's Lancelot?" Guinevere asked, appearing at Arthur's side.

"Doesn't Galehaut know?" Leon asked. He approached Galehaut, who was effortlessly stretching some way away. "Galehaut—"

"Don't ask me, Sir Leon," he said. "I haven't seen him since the…altercation. I think he took my intervention on his behalf as an insult."

"You're not fighting for Lancelot's honor here," Leon said.

"Sir Gwaine might not be, but I am most certainly doing so." He gave a bright smile, a welcome change from the bright smiles that Sir K gave, but Leon still got the feeling that he was hiding something. "Do not worry about me, Sir Leon," he said, "I am quite capable of taking care of myself in a duel."

"Still, I would feel better if you did. I'll go have a look 'round for him."

"What a thoughtful man you are, Sir," Galehaut said. "Only…you might want to hurry? Sir Gwaine looks to be in no mood for delays."

...

Gwaine was in no mood to kid around.

"Elyan, with me," he said as he walked past where the knights were lined up. Elyan wrinkled his brow but followed Gwaine to where the armor was laid out. Gwaine savagely took up a sword and shield, since that was what it appeared Sir Galehaut had chosen.

"Gwaine?" Elyan said. "What's up? Are you okay?"

"You're my second," he said, and then snarled and threw the sword into the grass at his feet when he couldn't grip it with his stupid useless injured hand.

Elyan looked at him, eyes wide with concern.

Gwaine tried to calm himself as he took up the sword in his other hand. "Sir Elyan. Will you please be my second? Not even for me, I don't care, but for your sister."

"Wasn't Sir K your—?"

"Will you or won't you?" Gwaine growled. It seemed as though he'd be fighting left-handed today. Again. Gaius would probably kill him for even entering the duel like this. You know, like breaking his ward's arm wasn't reason enough to kill him.

Yup, he was dead.

He began to lash the shield to his right arm, tied so that it would stay even if he couldn't grip it.

"You're not left-handed," Elyan pointed out.

"No. But I am royally pissed off. You won't have anything to clean up, I guarantee it," Gwaine said, and looked sidelong at Elyan. "So you in or not?"

"I'm in, I'm in," Elyan sighed, shaking his head at him.

But Gwaine ignored the look and brushed past him, heading for the field. He spun his sword experimentally as he squinted up at Galehaut. "So, how do we do this? I should warn you, I'm not used to rules and Codes and things. I'm sure Leon's told you." He tried to make his grin shark-like, and he was sure he was angry enough that it mostly worked.

"I look forward to trying my hand against your unique…style, Sir Gwaine," Galehaut said, bowing. "I have heard that you are generally unbeatable among the knights."

"Only generally?" Gwaine smirked, getting a laugh out of the crowd.

Arthur rolled his eyes but waved his hand for silence. "Then let us begin the duel," he said in his Speech voice. "Sir Gwaine, for why do you challenge Sir Galehaut?"

'Because he's an ass and a sissy,' Gwaine barely refrained from muttering, and when Arthur coughed he said out loud: "For the Queen's Honor!"

Arthur turned to Galehaut. "Sir Galehaut. For why do you defend you from Sir Gwaine?"

"For the Honor of her Subjects," Galehaut responded proudly.

Oh, sure. Stealing his material now, too, the fighting-for-the-common-man angle. This was going to be a genuine pleasure.

The crowds began to cheer as the opponents made their ways to the opposite ends of the lists. Gwaine pumped his arms and egged them on, letting his blood go ahead and boil, his vision go red. Galehaut didn't deserve it, but he was going to get all of Gwaine's anger—not only what he deserved for insulting Gwen like that, but _all _his anger—at K, at Arthur, at Merlin being hurt, at himself, at everything.

Trumpets sounded. Galehaut saluted him.

And then Gwaine caught Gwen's eye. Or perhaps she caught his.

And she was shaking her head at him, ever-so-slightly, warning.

Gwaine gulped: he had forgotten. He wasn't supposed to wipe the floor with Galehaut—not _yet—_not as long as Lancelot wasn't watching.

_So unfair._


	23. Chapter 23

His arm hurt, but certainly not badly enough—yet—that he would even consider that nasty stuff Arthur had tried to give him. He had a feeling, though, that if he didn't distract himself fairly soon, it was going to start throbbing worse, and he might actually be tempted. So, before he could get quite that desperate, he decided he'd go clean up the laundry he'd dropped and get it taken care of before going to watch the duel and make sure Gwaine and Galehaut didn't accidentally succeed in killing each other. He was still annoyed with Gwaine for not considering that waxing the bottom of someone's shoes could seriously injure them, but it sounded like K had put him up to it. And while he hadn't really been paying attention when Arthur had come storming in, having been distracted by Gaius poking and prodding at his arm, he was pretty sure Arthur had been asking something about why Gwaine had struck K. And the knight had had a very obvious fat lip when he'd left… and it wasn't so very hard to put two and two together. Gwaine had probably punched Sir K, and it had been after Merlin had stumbled away to get his arm tended to. So maybe he wasn't quite as annoyed as he'd been.

Picking up the clothes took a little longer than he'd anticipated, and balancing the basket of clothes one-handed when usually he would have used both was awkward. He couldn't even carry it against his chest, because that jarred both his splinted and wrapped lower arm and his shoulder. After countless growls of frustration, he finally managed to get the clothes all the way to the castle laundry rooms, where they were taken from him to be washed. He set off back across the castle, already bored with having his arm wrapped against his body and fidgeting with the bandage that was keeping the splint where it belonged.

He wound his way back to the practice grounds at a walk, instead of his customary half-run, seeing as how his usual neck-or-nothing bolting around the castle hadn't worked terribly well earlier and would now only jar his shoulder and a number of bruises. It was frustrating, having to walk when he really would have liked to be at the practice grounds _right now_, and he wasn't paying a lot of attention to where he was going. He nearly tripped over several gnomes as he rounded a corner, and leapt back with a startled squeak that he would have denied if anyone had been around to hear him. Gnomes? Had Arthur really put gnomes in the _halls _now? He stepped forward and looked at them more closely, frowning. They looked like the ones Arthur had thrown into the chest. One of them, the one holding the rake, he'd definitely seen Gwaine smash.

This was bad. The gnomes had escaped their chest, _and _they could rebuild themselves. Who knew where they were right now, and in a castle full of nobles, they had plenty of prey to choose from. He had to tell someone, but first… first he had to deal with these. Obviously breaking them didn't kill them, but maybe it would at least slow them down.

So he picked them up, one at a time, and dropped them back to the floor with a satisfying crash. Then he kicked the pieces up and down the hall so there was more distance to cover if they wanted to put themselves back together. Some of the pieces he bent to pick up and dropped just outside the castle doors on his hurried way to the practice grounds. No, jogging definitely wasn't what he would have described as comfortable, but he needed to tell Gwaine about the gnomes before they went and killed someone else.

But he was a little late. He saw Gwaine and Galehaut squaring off well before he was within shouting distance, although Lancelot was missing as Galehaut's second, and K seemed to have been replaced by Elyan. Also, Gwaine appeared to be fighting left-handed. Merlin supposed he shouldn't have been surprised, but it didn't stop him from rolling his eyes in exasperation as he joined the others watching, ignoring the several double-takes from those who hadn't witnessed him falling down the stairs in order to look around for Leon and Lancelot.

They were nowhere to be seen, either one of them. And that made Merlin decidedly nervous, given the wandering gnomes. But he stood quietly and watched and pulled at a loose thread in the bandage on his arm until Arthur, standing next to him, whacked his good arm and told him to, "Stop that, or I'll send you back to Gaius," without ever taking his eyes off the fight.

**...**

Leon made it a point to know where each of his knights liked to relax when they were by themselves, mainly for occasions like these. For Gwaine, it was a quiet tavern on the edge of the Lower Town. Percival liked sitting on the fence of the sheep pen. Merlin was usually hiding somewhere in the apothecary rafters.

Lancelot could invariably be found somewhere in the castle's extensive gardens.

They covered almost a complete side of the castle, and extended almost into the forest a quarter mile off. When Ygraine died, the gardens were forgotten and they essentially grew wild. In his later years Uther tried to do something now and then to restore the gardens, but as soon as Gwen and Arthur became engaged Gwen had done wonders for the garden to improve it. Still, most of it was overgrown with untrimmed hedges, moss-covered benches and wildflowers filling the paths. Lancelot frequented the garden in any state, though. His usual place to sit and write poetry or just think noble thoughts was on a stone terrace overgrown with ivy, which allowed him to look up at Guinevere's window and watch one of the castle exits that Gwen sometimes used. The terrace was empty, but Leon thought he saw a shadow on the far end of the garden near the forest. It disappeared around a hedge.

Leon pushed through a patch of particularly tall hollyhocks toward it. "Lancelot!" he called, but he only heard the rustling of leaves and the crunching of branches. Leon sighed and stomped off after the errant knight. "It isn't like you to sulk like this," he shouted. "Galehaut did this for you, you know—!"

But as he rounded the hedge he found himself looking at an empty field, lined on one side by a gnarled and forgotten orchard. The field rippled like water in the wind—a storm was going to be kicking up soon, judging by the gathering storm clouds above. They seemed to be gathering with surprising speed.

Figuring that the missing knight was not sulking around here after all, Leon turned to head back, and his boot hit something that tinkled and scraped gently against the cobblestone. He looked down, and saw a little ceramic gnome knocked on its side by his boot.

He stepped back, unblinking, then came forward and smashed the gnome under his boot. It shattered.

This—this was madness! Camelot _never_ had a problem with gnomes before!...

There was a sound like wood creaking, and he turned slowly to see that the trees really were growing before his very eyes. Here and there he saw flashes of red among the layers of green foliage, but in the wind Leon couldn't help but blink.

They moved closer across the orchard, and the orchard itself, before Leon's very eyes, was receding away, making the field Leon's only option for escape.

But Leon recognized their formation—it was a typical pincer move, meant to drive him out of the covert provided by the hedges. They _wanted _to get him running across the open field. He immediately recognized it as a fox-hunting move, which put an unpleasant thought in his mind: they were planning to hunt him down.

His heart instantly began to pound in his chest. He only had a few seconds before they got to him. But he thought so much about hunting that it only took a few seconds to switch his brain over from thinking like a hunter to thinking like the quarry. The beasts of venery flashed through his mind—Hare, hart, roe, buck, wild boar, wolf, badger, fox—all with very different evasion strategies and subsequent hunting styles. But they chose fox, and the strategy for the quarry's survival in such a hunt was based on cunning. Stay to the covert. Make them lose the scent. Keep a non-linear path.

And make sure to lead them away from the castle.

He almost found himself smiling. "You lot picked the wrong quarry," he said, and, just as the first gnome was about to reach him, he threw off his red cloak, bounded over the closest gnomes, and disappeared into the forest thicket.

...

Gwaine wasn't used to fighting like this. Not really.

He'd fought for sport before, for the entertainment of some people more sadistic than others. That was nothing new.

But he wasn't usually this distracted. He wasn't usually fighting these kinds of fights left-handed. He wasn't usually worried about his best friend, wasn't usually so consumed with hate for a cruel man (and Gwaine's tolerance for cruelty was high) who had deceived and betrayed him, wasn't usually trying to match-make and help people who didn't deserve to be helped, and he certainly wasn't usually being kept in check by a woman who wouldn't even sleep with him!

Gwaine was normally good at prolonging fights.

Today was not normal.

And, okay, Galehaut was maybe pretty good. But Gwaine wasn't in the mood to admit that.

The long and short of it was, he was getting his arse handed to him up and down the field. Oh, Gwaine could defend himself. He wasn't getting hurt, but this wasn't looking pretty, and many of the other knights looked embarrassed. It was especially infuriating because every time he even swung a little hard in retaliation, Gwen caught his eye and shook her head at him, and he was forced to pull his punches back and not brain the little brat.

And now it was raining. Super.

So when Lancelot finally arrived, Gwaine had never been so glad to see him in his life.

Gwaine didn't even wait for Gwen's signal, and honestly, the fight was over pretty quickly after Lance showed up—once Gwaine had free reign once again. A shield bash to the head, a kick to the instep, and an even, precise cut over the back of Galehaut's hand which made him drop his sword.

Then he smacked him around a bit—not enough to kill him, and not really enough to maim him, as he turned his blade so the flat edge struck him, leaving bruises where Galehaut could not get his shield up fast enough. And this felt good, this getting to let go. He had Galehaut swordless and backpedaling across the field hiding behind his shield. Sure, he looked like a villain, not giving Galehaut a chance to pick up his sword, but Gwaine was pretty sure he already _was_ a villain after today, so he could hardly dredge up the energy to care. In fact, if he kept going like this and Lancelot didn't intervene soon, as the Queen's gamble hazarded that he would, Galehaut might actually not walk away from this one on his own two legs—

Then a sword crossed his vision, blocking his next attack.

_There he was._

Gwaine looked up. Lancelot had, apparently, entered the arena, and had, apparently, taken it amiss that he was tearing Galehaut a new one on his account, and also had, apparently, picked up Galehaut's sword. Gwaine looked between them as their swords clashed, and since Galehaut looked sufficiently cowed and not a little bit bloody and battered, he let him go, and turned to face his new opponent. He and Lancelot squared off, and Gwaine saluted him as some squires hurriedly dragged Galehaut off the field.

Now Gwaine had to fight Lancelot, for, like, Galehaut's honor or something. Which was stupid.

Especially because the Queen had told him he had to let Lancelot _win_.

...

Leon bounded through the brush, leapt down underneath a rotting log and went still. He tried to catch his breath in complete silence, and made himself wheeze and cough. It was raining, and though he knew he should be shivering without his cloak to keep out the damp he thanked every drop that fell. Hunts didn't go on in the rain. With the water to wash away his scent, combined with all the feints and back-switches he threw into his escape, the gnomes probably lost his trail long ago. Still, you could never be too careful. More than once he managed to catch a fox that had wandered back to the open field when it erroneously supposed that he had given up the hunt.

He waited for about half an hour under that log, feeling beetles crawling around his hands and regretting the loss of his cloak as a thick fog settled in on the forest floor. It couldn't be later than, oh, three in the afternoon, but already the storm clouds and the mist made the forest look bathed in twilight. But there was no sign of a gnome anywhere.

He got up after a cautious look-round revealed no ceramic monsters, rubbing some life back into his legs—he must have ran nearly five miles into the forest—and had a good cough at the damp in his lungs. He used to spend whole nights out in the forest. Now all he wanted was to curl up next to the fire with a cup of mulled wine.

_I'm not getting that old yet, am I?_

He knew this particular area of the forest, and took a familiar trail back to Camelot, figuring it didn't matter. Anyway, the trail was surrounded by brush and he could easily leap back into the thick of it if any gnomes were spotted.

Still, he was getting cold, and his sweat which already drenched him felt even more cold without the protection the log provided. He started to jog.

He knew the trail so well that when he tripped he was genuinely confused, but he managed to catch himself just in time—

He didn't remember any more.

...

Gwaine deserved this.

He was a piss-poor judge of character.

He never thought before he acted.

He was directly responsible for the injury of his first friend.

He had just let his anger get the better of him against a man who didn't really deserve it.

He generally made his King look bad pretty much all the time—and he kind of didn't care.

Gwaine tried to tell himself this as Lancelot attacked him, with precise, predictable, honorable, textbook efficiency that Gwaine had mostly—okay, _barely—_under control.

And the queen had practically ordered him to lose this match to Lancelot.

And he hurt, and he was tired, and fighting bloody left-handed, and Lancelot was probably going to take him down anyway if he kept this up, but _still _he just couldn't bring himself to lose. It was a hard habit to break, knowing his entire life that losing meant death.

No, he told himself. This was just a game. This was just play-fighting. He could lose, and he wouldn't die. At worst, it would be a ding in honor he didn't have, and a knock to pride he didn't care about.

And it would make Gwen happy.

And it might get Lancelot on track.

And it would make Galehaut's day.

And he _deserved_ it.

So Gwaine faked a convincing slip in the wet grass and went down on his back. He half-bothered lifting his sword-arm, but with a flick of his wrist, Lancelot disarmed him and held the sword at his throat.

"Do you yield, Sir Gwaine?" he asked, flicking his wet hair out of his face dramatically.

Gwaine rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, let me up," Gwaine grumbled, taking a knife from his boot to cut the bonds holding the shield to his right arm before scrambling to his feet out of the mud. He stalked over to where the knights were gathered and Galehaut was being seen to by Gaius.

Arthur soon joined them. "Well fought, Sir Lancelot," he congratulated, and then turning to Gwaine, threw his arms wide with an incredulous look. "What happened out there, Sir Gwaine?" he teased, half-serious, half-playful. "I thought you were supposed to be undefeated?"

"Apparently not, sire," Gwaine ground out, not looking at him.

"I thought you fought admirably, Sir Gwaine," Gwen said, with a warm smile and a grateful nod. He followed her gaze to where Galehaut lay on a litter:

"This saving-my-life business is becoming a habit of yours," Galehaut was telling Lancelot.

"I try to always be true to my word," Lancelot said, patting his hand.

"But—I insulted her, and if you did not think I was trying to defend you, I don't—"

"It's alright, Galehaut. I understand now what you were trying to do for me, and even if it was misguided it took a lot of courage to do. Besides," he added with a smile. "I don't like to see a man friendless."

"I apologize for what I said, of course," he added to the room at large, before turning back to Lancelot: "I only did not want you to feel that you were alone."

"Nor I, you. I had promised to stand by you and I did not. Rest assured I shall not leave you in desperate need of help ever again."

"The world doesn't deserve your kind, Lancelot," Galehaut said, shaking his head.

They looked into each other's eyes for a moment, Lancelot's soft brown meeting Galehaut's pale blue.

Arthur coughed. Lancelot and Galehaut realized they were still holding hands and let go quickly.

"Yes, well, I hope you have learned your lesson—" Arthur said, "all around."

Gwaine nodded enough to be dismissed, and began scanning the crowd for Merlin. Even if Merlin wouldn't talk to him, Gwaine still had to make sure he was all right.

And then he was going to get drunk.


	24. Chapter 24

Gwaine, Merlin couldn't help but noticing, looked fairly definitely pissed off. He was definitely taking it out on Galehaut, who only partially deserved it for being wretched about Gwen, or he was until Lancelot stepped in, almost right on cue, and took up where Galehaut had left off—but with a lot more luck. Merlin knew Gwen had asked Gwaine to lose on purpose, but he honestly couldn't tell if the knight was faking it or not. Granted, the slipping looked a little contrived, maybe, a little, and Merlin couldn't hear what he said to Lancelot, but he could read body language as well as anyone—and Gwaine was not happy.

When Arthur went to congratulate Lancelot and talk to Galehaut and Gwaine, Merlin hung back slightly, partially because he couldn't very well bring up the gnomes around Arthur without getting them all in trouble, and partially because he wasn't so sure whether Gwaine was angry or guilty or just annoyed he'd lost on purpose. He waited until he realized Gwaine was looking around for him, and started to raise his arm to catch his attention.

Except his arm was, unsurprisingly, still wrapped to his chest, and tugging on it hadn't felt great. He winced and then wished he hadn't because Gwaine had undoubtedly caught the look. Merlin was pretty sure he saw an answering wince on his friend's face, and realized that _of course_, even though the stupid prank had been K's idea to begin with, Gwaine was pretty much blaming himself for it, which meant he was going to have to deal with guilt-ridden Gwaine on top of reassembling gnomes and an absent Leon. But he grinned somewhat hesitantly as his friend walked up to him looking really quite miserable.

"Look, Merlin, I—" he started, dropping his eyes to his feet, and Merlin just shook his head slightly before forestalling the apology.

"It's alright, Gwaine, no permanent harm done," he said.

"But—"

"Just forget it, okay? Or blame it on K, or… something. I'm fine," he said.

"Mate, I don't know what 'fine' means in your world, but…" Gwaine said, making a sort of hand motion that included Merlin's arm and the numerous other bumps and bruises.

"You're right, clearly I've been hanging around you knights too long," he said, and added, "How's your hand?"

"It's fine," Gwaine answered, and frowned when Merlin grinned brightly.

"So you were just fighting left-handed with your shield strapped to your arm for fun?" Merlin asked, snatching Gwaine's hand out of the air as the knight waved it dismissively. Gwaine made a face as Merlin poked at it, but short of rewrapping it there wasn't really much to be done. He rolled his eyes and let Gwaine snatch it back.

"Maybe you're the one who should have his arm wrapped to his chest," Merlin muttered, and then held up his hand when Gwaine looked momentarily guilty again. Then he thought better of it—maybe if he let Gwaine apologize he'd quit having to interrupt him. So he dropped his hand and just gave Gwaine one of those passive looks.

"Merlin, I really _am _sorry. I'm an idiot," he said. Merlin snorted, realized this might come across as obnoxious, and grinned.

"Sure, I know you are, okay, now can I tell you about the gnomes? It's kind of important," Merlin answered, and Gwaine glanced around as if Arthur might walk up behind them and whack them both upside the head for mentioning them again. Then he looked at Merlin.

"They got out of the chest Arthur put them in. And the ones you smashed put themselves back together, I saw them on the way here. I smashed them again, but I don't think it'll do much. How do we get rid of them?" he asked. None of Gaius' books had been of any help in this matter, not beyond the one he'd found earlier that had told them what the little beasts _were_. But Gwaine just shook his head.

"Maybe Leon?" he asked, but was interrupted from any further discussion by Elaine, who stepped up to he and Gwaine looking a little confused.

"I'm sorry, but were you just talking about Leon? I can't find him, and I haven't seen him since he went to find Lancelot," she said to the two of them. Merlin glanced over at Gwaine, who was looking nervously at Elaine, who was looking at the both of them as if expecting an answer.

"He's probably just…" Gwaine started, and then couldn't come up with an excuse.

"…been waylaid by George. About the moths. They've been eating the tapestries, and you know how George is," Merlin supplied helpfully, and saw a twitch out of the corner of his eye that might have been Gwaine very carefully not smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand at yet another of Merlin's many insect excuses.

**...**

Leon wasn't unconscious for very long-maybe two or three minutes, because when he woke up his body was still swinging slightly, and his leg didn't feel half so bad as it did only ten minutes later. And it took him about ten minutes to comprehend that, for one, he had indeed been knocked unconscious, probably by knocking his head on a rock when he tripped.

It took a bit longer to realize that he was upside-down.

The disorientation was just beginning to fade, and he looked down, then up. His left leg was snared with a thick and thorned vine around the ankle, which hung down from a tree branch about three feet below—no, above—him (he had to keep up and down straight, because where would he be if he could not?). He leaned his head back, making himself swing gently again to the tight groan of the ivy. He couldn't feel his foot anymore, but his leg was shooting pain up his—no, down his—spine and into his shoulders. His head was pounding, and his nostrils, eyelids and sinuses felt like they were full to bursting with blood. He reached _up_ and touched his temple with his gloved hand, and peered at it with bleary eyes. Quite a bit of blood had run _down_his face and into his hair, but it would probably stop bleeding soon.

As he swung there, about five feet away from the ground, he couldn't help thinking it was all so bloody _unfair_. They had been foxhunting, hadn't they? They couldn't just—change tactics in the middle of a hunt! Whoever thought of hunting a fox like a common hare? But that was exactly what they did, and Leon hated to admit it but it worked. A snare, set over a common path, was _textbook_—any squire could tell you that. And he fell for it.

He didn't even try to get his foot free. With both feet snared, it might be done, but with one the balance was off by too high of a margin, and one leg just didn't have the strength required to get him loose. He could hang there for hours before any gnomes bothered to check the snare.

What did he have? His chainmail, the boot off one foot, and a knife, the only things he didn't throw off within the first few minutes of the chase. He worked the knife out of its sheath and spent the next two hours alternating between trying to cut the vine and, since it was almost impossible while trying to bend up like that, breathing. After one desperate and utterly unsuccessful strike at the vine his weary and sweaty hand lost hold of the knife and it landed blade-first in the ground with a thud. He swore colorfully—that was probably all Gwaine's fault—then immediately regretted it. If they didn't know he was trapped before, they certainly knew now.

And it was getting dark.

His head ached with agonizing pulses as he turned to see a red ceramic hood just barely visible in the mist. His heart pumped hard in his ears.

"OK, OK…" Leon breathed to himself. Without taking his eyes off the gnome he unhooked his belt and wriggled out of his chain shirt. For once it was easy—the thing's weight made it almost slip off. Gripping the bottom of it in two hands, he swung it around once and savagely brought it down—the gnome practically exploded as the chainmail sleeve crashed into it.

Leon laughed almost maniacally at the gnome's fractured pieces. However, the movement caused him to dance in the air like a moth in a spiderweb, and he swung a few times before he caught sight of another gnome directly opposite the first. Another wind-up and he cracked the chainmail like a whip, sending the gnome crashing into oblivion before it could touch him.

Adrenaline pumped through his weary veins once again as he smashed gnome after gnome with the chain mail, even managing to pick off one that was climbing down the vine that bound him. Beads of sweat rolled down his forehead, and sizzled as they hit the ground below him.

_Sizzled?_

He caught his breath, and inhaled the chemically, burned-earth scent that he encountered in the anteroom with Merlin. He looked around, expecting to see light at the source of the magical fire. But all he saw was a very faint circle of blue flame directly below him. It didn't burn the leaves it surrounded and it didn't illuminate hardly anything at all.

But in the frigid damp of the forest he could distinctly feel heat rising from it.

Dusk turned into night.

...

"You're lying," Elaine said.

"What? No, I'm serious. George is possibly the most neurotically thorough servant—" Merlin began.

"Leon's disappeared," Elaine insisted. "He wasn't watching the duel. Now, either he is in trouble with me, or he is just in trouble." She looked at them sternly. "Also, Sir Gwaine, your lip is bleeding," she added, handing him her hanky.

"Where is Leon, now?" Lancelot asked, stepping up to them.

"He went to find you," Merlin said. "The gardens, or something?"

"I came from there and did not see him. What's wrong?" Lancelot demanded, while Galehaut, who had gotten up from the litter he was lying on, half-bandaged, came up behind him.

"Um..." Merlin began, but, well, now that they had an audience, this just sounded stupid.

Gwaine blew out a breath: "Evil magic gnomes are infesting the castle. We thought we got rid of them but we're not sure. Leon...might be in trouble. We have to go find him."

The knights took this surprisingly well. "What do you want us to do?" Galehaut asked, setting his jaw.

Gwaine grinned up at him. Now that he had kicked his arse, he felt one-hundred percent better about Sir Galehaut. "No hard feelings?"

"On the contrary, Sir Gwaine. I feel as though you have taught me a valuable lesson. Now, what can we do to help?"

Gwaine looked at Merlin, and then back at the other knights. "Keep an eye on Arthur. I think they go after those of noble blood, so Gwen should be safe." Gwaine shrugged. "So should you, Lance."

"If you see any gnomes, smash them," Merlin added. "They can only move when you're not looking at them, so don't blink."

Lancelot and Galehaut nodded.

"Okay," Gwaine said, tossing the handkerchief to Galehaut, who snatched it out of the air.

With his right hand.

Gwaine blinked. "You're...not left-handed?"

Galehaut smiled shyly. "You are not left-handed, either. I thought it only fair."

Gwaine laughed and shook his head at Galehaut, as Merlin dragged him off.

They were at the gardens quickly. Heads down, looking for any signs that Leon had been here.

Unsurprisingly, they found nothing.

"Hey! What are you doing here?" Gwaine exclaimed, as he looked up to see the lady Elaine pulling on leather riding gloves.

"I'm coming with you, of course."

"Coming? Where?"

"To rescue Sir Leon."

"What? No, it's too dangerous," Gwaine said automatically.

Elaine folded her arms and fixed him with a daring look.

"Do you even know where you are going?"

"We're looking for clues," Merlin defended helpfully.

She rolled her eyes, and with a glance around, walked across the garden to where an old woman was watering flowers.

"Excuse me, have you seen Sir Leon come this way?"

The old woman smiled up at Elaine. "Oh, yes, milady. He came just this way. Lookin' for Sir Lancelot, he was!"

Elaine turned and smiled at Gwaine and Merlin, who looked dumbfounded.

"And did you see which way he left?"

"Oh, aye. He up and run off east to the woods, like he was chasing butterflies, he was!" she laughed heartily at that.

Elaine smiled, thanked the woman, and walked back to Gwaine and Merlin.

"What was that?" Gwaine asked.

"Asking for directions. Now are you coming or not?"

Without waiting more than a moment for their answer, Elaine had turned and started walking toward the forest. After throwing each other looks that were equal parts confusion and consternation, Gwaine and Merlin went after her.

"Elaine, wait. You can't just go running out there," Gwaine remarked, stepping in front of her and turning to block her path. She leveled a look at him, and he looked back over her shoulder at Merlin, nodding toward the stables. Merlin looked at him cluelessly for a moment before a look of comprehension dawned on his face and he turned to go get horses.

"It'll take all night to find him on foot. He could be anywhere! We need to take horses," Gwaine explained, taking Elaine's elbow and turning her the direction Merlin had gone. With a snort, she followed after him and between the three of them, they got Diablo, Royale, and Elaine's horse saddled. One their way out of the castle, they had the sense to "borrow" some of the torches that were set in sconces along the wall, because they would certainly need light when the sun went down. It was already growing toward dusk, and in the forest night fell even faster for all the trees.

It wasn't easy to track Leon or the gnomes, so by the time they were able to find any sign by which to track the knight, Elaine knew all about the gnomes and what they'd been up to, and they'd had to light the torches. The rain seemed to be letting up, but now the wind that often came after the rain had kicked up and the torches wouldn't stay lit. After the third time they had to stop to relight the things, Merlin surreptitiously said a short spell to make the foolish things stay lit. Elaine proposed splitting up to look for Leon, but neither Gwaine nor Merlin were leaving her alone with a lot of gnomes running around—she was noble, after all. Also Leon would kill them both stone dead if he ever found out they'd done such a thing.

They moved through the forest calling Leon's name until Elaine thought she saw something and insisted on checking it out, leaving Merlin and Gwaine to trail after her, ducking branches and trying to keep their balance as the horses picked their way over uneven forest floor by the meager torchlight. Elaine had a mind of her own, that woman…

But it turned out her eyesight was better than either Merlin's or Gwaine's, because as they drew nearer they saw Sir Leon, swinging upside down by one foot, whacking away at gnomes with his chainmail shirt. It was ingenious, really, using the chain mail, and it appeared he'd already had some luck with the tactic. They clopped closer as the last visible light leaked out of the forest, leaving them no light source other than the torches. Oh, and the blue magic fire glowing beneath Leon. Because they could now be seen, the gnomes that had surrounded him were now immobile, but getting Leon down was going to be interesting, since the only one of their party with two fully-functional arms was Elaine, and she didn't look like she was game for scrambling into the tree and chopping the vine that held Leon suspended off the ground.

"They caught _you_ in one of _those_?" Gwaine asked as they approached and he and Merlin both swung off their horses, tying them to a branch nearby while trying to keep an eye on the gnomes and carefully skirting the blue fire. It was definitely magic fire- not burning any of the things around it, but still hot enough that when Merlin stepped close to it, he could feel the heat through his boots, just like any ordinary campfire.

"Not _now_, Gwaine, just get me down!" Leon said, perhaps a bit emphatically, and then noticed the third member of the party as she sat on her horse and tried to make sense of the whole scene. "_Elaine?_" he asked, swinging a little as he tried to get a better look at her.

"Perhaps we should deal with the gnomes?" Merlin asked, holding his torch down close to the ring of fire and the gnomes.

They all turned, not thinking, as the blue fire flicked right out of existence. Then, realizing no one was watching the gnomes, they all wheeled back around, torchlight spilling out away from the tree and throwing flashing, uneven shadows all around. But the gnomes hadn't moved. There were certainly more of them, and more crawling out of the shadows every time the light fell off of them, but they seemed to be staying at a safe distance.

And then all three torches flicked out briefly before relighting, and the group found themselves completely ringed and hemmed in by the little red-capped figures, arms reaching, faces grimacing. Merlin glanced surreptitiously up at his own torch with some concern. That spell should have been keeping them lit, without flicking out and throwing them all into darkness. The horses whinnied as things brushed against their legs, running into each other and dragging their heavy hooves nervously across the ground.

"I think we should get Leon down sooner, rather than later," Merlin remarked, eyes returning to the gnomes, hastily trying to concoct a plan by which he could illuminate the immediate vicinity without Leon or Elaine noticing he was doing some serious magic.


	25. Chapter 25

Leon would have been in good spirits and been able to laugh at himself a little if he hadn't been hanging upside down for several hours. As it was he fumed silently as Gwaine and Merlin seemed to debate whether they were going to let him down at all.

Then the torches flickered in the wind, and Merlin, bless him, insisted on the most sensible course of action.

Gwaine laughed nervously as he eyed the torches. "Yeah. Sure. Alright." he said. "Don't take your eyes off those gnomes—I'm going to cut him down. Elaine, catch the great lump for me, will you?"

Gwaine, his eyes still on the other half of the gnomes that Merlin wasn't watching, started to untie the vine-snare as Elaine strode forward. Leon looked at her upside-down face with worry. "Lady Elaine, it's not safe for—"

He was cut off, very abruptly, as Elaine took hold of him, turned his head slightly downward, and kissed him on the mouth. She was, just like last time, at the perfect height to do so, but there was some considerable amount of urgency in the kiss that made her fingers tight at his jawline and ears, pressing his lips into hers (not that he could have shied away, anyway). Being kissed upside-down was _not _the sort of thing he had in mind when he had just been rescued from being eaten alive. Having her nose and hot breath pressed into his cold bearded chin, her lips inverted against his while he stared her right in the throat, felt highly immoral and utterly wrong. But the thrill that went through him at such a strange kiss, with his senses heightened and his body still high on terror, was absolutely electric. He would never, not in a hundred years, get a kiss like that again.

She pulled away from his lips and he sank like lead—both psychologically and literally as Gwaine lowered him down to the ground, into Elaine's arms on the now-cold earth below. "Are you alright?" she asked, worry in her every feature as she propped him up.

"Y-yes, of course," he managed. His blood, now pumping the right away again, left a feeling of fizzy light-headedness.

"Good," she said, and kissed him again. She had been holding back with the last kiss, and now he felt her tongue and teeth and other things he did not have any experience encountering besides his own. He gave a tiny bewildered moan of pleasure.

"Far be it from me to keep you two from getting interesting," Gwaine said in affected tones of pomposity, "But could you finish eating him alive when we're back at the castle, and help me by keeping those gnomes from stealing the horses?"

Elaine blushed quite deeply and practically dumped Leon on the ground in her hurry to stand up and face the ceramic terrors. Gwaine, taking the opportunity of free eyesight to roll his eyes, pulled a sobering Leon to his feet.

"Can you walk?" Gwaine asked. Merlin was off kicking ceramic gnomes into the trunks of nearby trees with satisfying crunches of ceramic. Now and then he said something under his breath, which Leon promptly tried to ignore—he hadn't heard Merlin curse before and wasn't in a mood to find out what Gwaine had managed to teach him now. He tested his leg and nodded before he turned his eyes on the gnomes, just in case Elaine or Merlin blinked involuntarily.

"I was trying to lead them away from the castle," he said.

"Ah, see, I knew you could be stupidly reckless in a pinch," Gwaine retorted smoothly. "Now we're out in the middle of nowhere, with torches that shouldn't be going out but just happen to be doing so!"

He shouted that last bit, and Leon raised an eyebrow. "Why shouldn't they go out? It's windy."

"Come on, Camelot torches ought to be made to withstand a little breeze," Gwaine countered without missing a beat. "I'm sure you had a good plan, but we'd better get back to the castle."

Leon nodded. "Merlin, help Elaine with her horse, we'll watch them."

Merlin, looking frustrated, turned away from gnome-punting and helped Elaine mount before he went to his own horse.

"Up you get, Leon," Gwaine said.

"Mount up, I'll watch them," Leon replied.

"Leon, you know that normally I'd listen to you—"

"—You wouldn't—"

"But I'm in charge of this mission, and I've got to get my ladies to safety."

As one Leon, Merlin, and Elaine turned to Gwaine and said, "Who are you calling 'your ladies'?"

That's when the torches went out.

...

Gwaine blinked, to make sure that wasn't just a trick of his eyes somehow and, was, in fact, just his luck. A flash of lightning bathed the clearing in light for a second only.

"Merlin..." Gwaine ground out.

"I know, I know, I'm trying!" Merlin hissed back.

"Easy, it's not his fault," Leon said, fortunately misunderstanding what Gwaine had meant. "It's all right," he went on, way too calmly, like a father talking children down off a fright. Gwaine flinched and turned, as something brushed past him in the dark. "We just have to get on the horses and—"

_"Nyeeeeehh!" _Studly screeched—Studly, who never, as a rule, screeched or showed any signs of panic—leading the other steeds to practically wet themselves. In the darkness, they knew nothing but a flurry of hooves and screaming horses. Elaine was shouting. The horses snapped free of their posts.

In the next flash of lightning, everyone saw the horses tearing off towards Camelot, with Elaine along for the ride. Leon shouted after her.

Only Gwaine saw what scared them.

"Uh—boys?"

With every flash of lightning, more gnomes gathered. Gwaine turned his back to Leon and Merlin, like keeping eyes on their targets in the dark would help at all.

"Damn! Now we'll have to make it on foot," Leon didn't curse often, but he had waited until there were no ladies present, which was kind of cute.

"Boys?" Gwaine tried again, his agitation growing.

"We can't see anything in the dark," Merlin punctuated warningly. "We should get out of here."

Multiple, separate, tiny breezes whipped his cloak around his feet. It sounded and felt like the forest floor was crawling with insects. But he couldn't _see_.

"Merlin! Leon!" Gwaine snapped.

Lightning flashed again, and the brief revelation wasn't pretty.

Tiny ceramic faces twisted in grotesque delight, arms outstretched. There might have been a hundred of them, all around, in a tightening circle, above them in the trees. Gwaine smelled burning.

And in the following crash of thunder, Gwaine's first thought went to Merlin, so he grabbed the warlock by the shirt collar. As the thunder echoed back, Gwaine realized that was stupid, and he had to reach back to his other side to grab Leon's arm—Leon, who was in far more danger than Merlin, being of noble blood.

And as they were plunged into darkness and silence once again, Gwaine realized—or rather, you know, _admitted_, now that it was staring him in the face—that he was, if you wanted to be technical about it, noble, too.

"Oh, hell."

**...**

The torches had gone out, and no amount of spell-casting or muttering or cursing under his breath would relight them. It didn't stop him trying one last time as the lightning flashed and they all caught a good look at the gnomes, poised in the split second of almost-daylight brightness to attack. Merlin nearly jumped out of his skin when Gwaine grabbed the collar of his shirt, thinking for a moment that the gnomes were trying to get him out of the way.

This had really gone downhill quite quickly, he thought, jostling into Gwaine and Leon both as something brushed against his leg. Something else landed on his foot and he kicked at it, hearing the satisfying smash of ceramic on a tree trunk several feet away. But in another flicker of lightning, he saw that the circle had closed, and when the lightning flickered out, he felt more weight on his feet and was nearly toppled over as Gwaine ran into him, apparently trying to get away from his own assailants.

Merlin glanced around a bit frantically. If it came down to it, he could probably cast a spell to kill the gnomes- but there was certainly no way Leon wouldn't notice, and that would cause endless problems. It would still be better than his two friends ending up as burned husks, though, and after only a split second's thought, Merlin was fully prepared to do something—anything—that might at least slow the gnomes down, and took a breath in preparation to speak.

Off to his right, in front of Gwaine, a large number of gnomes exploded. Or, rather, it sounded like they exploded. Gwaine jumped back from the sound, collided with Merlin's arm, and Leon had to grab them both to keep them from falling as Merlin yelped and stumbled back. A moment later, more gnomes exploded in front of where Merlin had been standing and in front of Leon, and shards rained down on their heads from the trees. For the next few breaths, there were only the sounds of ceramic clattering and smashing, while the three men tried to protect both themselves and each other from this new, unidentifiable threat. More lightning flashed, but they saw nothing helpful, not even shards of the gnomes, which appeared to have disintegrated into piles of sand.

One of the torches, discarded when it'd gone out, flickered back into life and Merlin jumped forward to grab it from the forest floor, then held it up to look at Gwaine and Leon. The forest was still disconcertingly silent, except for the soft crackle-pop of the single torch. There was clearly still something out there, because something out there had utterly destroyed the gnomes…and if it could destroy the gnomes, the chances that it could do the same to them was pretty high.

"Out of the frying pan…" Gwaine muttered, and Merlin had to agree with him.

"Nothing nearly so dramatic," a voice said from the shadows in the trees, and all three of them turned, the two knights stepping forward and Merlin falling behind them—not for protection, but in case it became necessary to throw out a quick spell without hopefully being noticed.

Smiling, as if amused by the reactions of those they'd just saved, a group of druids stepped from between the trees and regarded Merlin, Leon, and Gwaine.

"You may put your weapons away, I believe. They will not be coming back," the eldest of them said, and then nudged a pile of sand with his foot and added, under his breath, "Horrid little monsters…"


	26. Chapter 26

The torch, as appreciated as it was, did not illuminate the forest very well. Leon peered into the darkness and nearly started out of his skin when he saw several drab, hooded cloaks in the flickering dark. Only druids wore such distinctive cloaks—indeed, only magic could have destroyed all of the gnomes in such a short amount of time. One of the druids stepped on the dust left behind by one of the gnomes, making it crunch under his boot.

Leon saw enough magic in his life to not react with too much fright to the druids, but he certainly didn't feel at ease as the druids stepped into the weak torchlight and revealed themselves. Gwaine snatched the torch from Merlin and brandished it before the closest druid. "Well, whoever you are…!" he growled, then, seeming to lose heart before the solemn gaze of the nearest druid, finished with a quieter, "Thanks."

"The Gnomish people will not bother Camelot again," the druid said. Even in the dim firelight Leon started to recognize him. The bushy gray hair, the green cloak, the penetrating stare….

He felt the color drain from his face. "God have mercy…"

"Come," the druid Iseldir said, thankfully not hearing him. "We shall return you to your people." He turned away, letting Leon break his stare. He turned to see Merlin staring at him with concern, and he looked down, blinking rapidly. It—it wasn't—he wasn't supposed to meet him...

He found himself walking directly behind Iseldir in the half-darkness. Gwaine and Merlin were walking with other druids, and thus the torch light flashed in and out against the dark green of Iseldir's cloak. It looked so different from the soft candle glow that shone on it all that time ago. It was the first thing he saw as the blackness of death fell away. He remembered the blade that pierced his shoulder, the mace that crashed into the side of his skull. He remembered lying there, breathing in fallen leaves to the sound of his haggard breathing and the screams of knights as they fell around him. He was terrified, but—but at least he died fighting for his king. He could finally pay the debt for losing Galahad's life to the dragon.

His eyes could barely focus, aware with a kind of numb emptiness that death almost—that death had—opened beneath him. He died, like he should have died under the dragon's breath, and he felt a certain peace in it for the balance it restored.

Then something cold had touched his lips, and his senses returned to him, his breath came ragged into his throat, like it didn't belong there. Candles glared all around him, and the grey-haired druid's eyes staring at him. He staggered to his feet, his wounds miraculously gone, and the druid did not try to stop him. Should he be grateful? Defiant? He only felt afraid. "My name is Iseldir," the grey-haired druid said, and then added, as if he had read Leon's mind, "Run home." He had always been a swift runner, and he had never wanted to run so badly as he did then. The druids backed away as he tore out of the cave and sprinted through the trees, relishing in every step that took him farther from the knights that died around him and closer to the kingdom he thought he died for.

It wasn't right. This was the second time that he should have died, and lived instead. A hard knot formed in his stomach.

He faced death many times after that, intentional and accidental. At the hand of an immortal soldier's blade, at the tip of an errant bolt from a crossbow. Every time the knot in his stomach grew a little larger. Why was he always the one who survived, when all of his friends met their deaths?

"We meet again, Sir Galahad," Iseldir said, jerking Leon sharply out of the realm of introspection. He had stepped to the side and slowed his pace, allowing Leon to walk beside him. But the name that the druid called him made him break stride. He had to have misheard the man. But—he knew he didn't. He knew in the way that his heart plummeted into his stomach. He could try to deny it, but he couldn't bring himself to contradict that steel expression as the druid waited for him. "Why did you call me that?"

"You are the Knight who found the Cup of Life and used it to protect his people, are you not?" He turned and Leon followed after him.

"But—well, I found the Cup of Life in a way, but I didn't _protect_anyone," Leon said. "It brought nothing but destruction to Camelot and to…" he stopped, realizing that the druid probably knew all too intimately the destruction that its discovery had brought to everyone.

"You and the Cup of Life are intertwined, Galahad," the druid continued. "There is a tale of a man whose lips touched the Cup, and who used the strength it gave him to bridge the divide between magic and majesty, to stand before law to protect the half which makes the king whole."

Leon remained quiet for a few minutes, trying to dismiss every word of this prophecy while at the same time memorizing every word. He knew druids spoke in prophecy, perhaps…perhaps this divination was meant for Galahad, if he had lived.

"You question my prophecy?" Iseldir asked.

"I am not Galahad," Leon said, emphatically.

"If you live your life in his shade, are you not his shadow? What Galahad was meant to accomplish, magic has given over to Leon Æþling." He paused for a moment, then continued, "You are wise not to be thankful for the life returned to you. You know that such a gift is a burden, often neither good nor bad." Here he smiled, a strange expression on a face so stern. "But this is good, Sir Galahad. It is good that you should live."

Leon wanted to take his name and shove it down the druid's damn throat—either that or scream. But Leon was naturally sensitive to the wills and intentions of others, so he blurted out, "Thank you," and meant it. The knot in his stomach didn't go away, though.

The druid just looked down, and rejoined the druids walking ahead of them.

...

As Leon went ahead and Merlin hung back, Gwaine began to feel uncomfortable that they had become separated in the group of Druids. It felt vaguely like a prison escort, though that was of course ridiculous, not least because he could probably take on the whole fleet of pacifistic pansies by himself.

Well, except there was the magic.

Gwaine didn't care one way or the other about magic—after all, Merlin was about as magic as you got and was as sweet as pie—but Gwaine had seen enough of the world to know that magic was one of those powers that got abused often enough to make him generally uncomfortable with those who wielded it.

That wasn't to say, of course, that he didn't have the ability to surmount his discomfort. Especially for a face like _hers_.

He fell into step with the druid girl, all chocolate skin and curly hair and huge bright eyes, and quickly made his move:

"So, you rescue knights from killer gnomes around here often?"

She looked at him sideways with a shy, and somehow very knowing, smile. She was silent just long enough for Gwaine to get uncomfortable enough to start thinking up a back-up chat-up line, when she replied with another question, "You are Strength, are you not?"

"Em..." Of all the possible responses, Gwaine had not expected that one. "Huh?"

"Grettir the Gatekeeper spoke of you."

Gwaine blinked, confused. Unless she was talking about that dwarf when he went on that quest to help Merlin save Arthur. But, "Again, I've got nothing. You must have mistaken me for someone else. I look like a lot of people. Do you know I was even once mistaken for Cenred of Essetir—"

She laughed a sparkling, high laugh. Gwaine liked it when ladies found him amusing, but he usually preferred to say something funny before they laughed at him. "It is said many resist their destiny."

Now it was Gwaine's turn to laugh, and he looked around to see if Merlin and Leon were getting told the same rubbish and were buying it, but they were no where to be seen. "I don't believe in destiny, thanks. I'm a free-will kind of guy. I don't like people telling me what to do, and I sure as hell don't hold with people telling me what I am _going _to do."

"Whether you want it or not, Strength," she said, smiling softly and walking on, "your destiny is greater than you want to believe." Gwaine wrinkled up his nose in distaste, but in spite of the setback, he kept pace with her. Before he could figure out what to say next, "That pendant you wear. It is special to you."

"Uhh." Gwaine tripped up again, and his hand went instinctively to clutch at the emblem, but he quickly rallied. "No, not especially." Actually, the pendant was all he had left of his family, but he sure as hell wasn't telling her that. What was with this girl and her probing questions? She was making him uncomfortable.

"I do not wish to discomfit you, Sir Gwaine," she said, and he relaxed a hair.

"So you _do _know my actual name?" Gwaine beamed at this victory. "My reputation precedes me, as usual."

"You are known by many names, to those who hear. You are the Strength which completes Magic and Courage, and you are Magic's Champion." She stopped, peering at him intently, and he stopped, mouth flapping. "But beware, for when you defend Magic, you will lose much."

"Oh, I will, will I?" Gwaine laughed as scornfully as he could manage, halting all thoughts of warming his bed with a druid girl tonight. He was actually kind of turned off at this point. _No_ girl was worth this much introspection. He wouldn't ever be that desperate. "Well, thanks for the soothsaying and oracle...ing stuff, and thanks for saving us and all, but—" they were in sight of the castle, now, its lit ramparts sparkling over the line of trees, "but, well, here we are." He had actually never been so happy to see Camelot, and he marveled a bit at the fairly novel feeling of truly coming home. "So, you know, sorry to cut this short, but I think we can take it from here," he said quickly, painfully aware of the travesty that was him _not _asking her to his chambers.

Now she looked at him sadly, and stopped. For the first time, Gwaine felt a little remorseful for his quick words and closed mind, and, not for the first time, began to reconsider inviting her up to his chambers. For some reason he did not like the idea of leaving her alone here in the woods—which was ridiculous, because she was probably better equipped for survival out here than he could ever hope to be—yet he still felt oddly protective of her, even having only known her for half an hour.

Gwaine sighed dramatically and stalked back to where she stood. "On second thought, I've behaved appallingly. If you know me as well as you claim to, you'll know that's no surprise. I would—we all would—appreciate it if you would be our guests in Camelot tonight. We don't even need to mention that you're Druids, Arthur's frightfully thick when it comes right down to it, and—"

Now, quick as lightning, she grabbed his arm. Her eyes glowed gold, the sign of magic, and when she spoke, her voice was different: hoarse, deep, and foreboding, like the universe and everything in it was speaking through her. "**Heed the prophecies. Your destiny is Strength, your choice is exile. Your blood is both your greatest downfall and your greatest triumph.**"

Gwaine tried to pull away, but her grip was inhumanly strong. He was just beginning to panic when the gold faded and she stumbled, looking dazed. "Hey, hey! Are you all right?" he asked, steadying her.

She looked confused. "Uh. Yeah. What? What did you say?"

"What did _I_ say?" Gwaine repeated. "What did _you _say? You went all goldy-eyed and weird there for a minute."

"Oh," she said, straightening shakily. "That happens sometimes. What did I say?"

"I don't know! Something about my blood being my downfall and triumph. What was that?"

"I am a Seer," she explained. "Normally the messages are not that powerful. I apologize if I worried you. You said you can take it from here? I may need to just rest a moment." She reached out, touched a tree, and slowly slid down it until she was resting on the ground, her back against the trunk, her knees clutched against her chest.

"I'll stay with you," Gwaine offered gallantly, and looked around. "Is there a shelter nearby? Somewhere I can take you?" _Also, where have the others gone?_

Now she giggled. "Sir Gwaine, I am a Druid. I am sheltered everywhere."

"Must be nice," Gwaine said, hankering down next to her.

The silence was quickly awkward.

"That last bit you said," Gwaine tried, "not that I'm ready to believe it, but if I did—what does that even mean? My blood being my own problem or whatever. 'My blood,' does that mean me? Or my, em—" he paused, "I don't really have any family."

"I cannot interpret," she said with a shrug. "It could mean either. Or both."

Gwaine nodded.

The silence was awkward again. Apparently aside from prophetic mumbo-jumbo, Druids weren't great conversationalists.

"So...Anything we can do to pass the time?" he asked, actually quite innocently, but when he looked up at her, the sparkle in her eyes was anything but innocent. He licked his lips, equal parts hungry and nervous.

"I can think of one or two," she replied, leaning forward to capture his mouth in a kiss.

**...**

While Gwaine and Leon walked ahead, each talking to a druid in hushed tones that Merlin couldn't even begin to hear, he kicked along at the back of the group, his good hand stuffed in his jacket pocket, watching the other druids around them out of the corners of his eyes. He didn't jump when one of them fell into step beside him, but he also didn't look up. He just continued kicking the twig he'd found along the path, glancing up only to make sure Leon and Gwaine were still there. They were both still deep in conversation, but neither looked overly distressed, so he stopped worrying and went back to kicking the stick along in front of him.

"Emrys," the druid next to him finally said, and Merlin sighed shortly. He couldn't ever get them to call him Merlin, no matter how many times he told them. It didn't stop him trying…

"It's Merlin," he answered, without looking up. The steps next to him paused and then hopped forward to catch him.

"Merlin?" the druid asked, and Merlin glanced up to find himself meeting the curious green eyes of a man not much older than he. That was a surprise in and of itself, given that he'd been expecting someone much older. Somewhat embarrassed at his slightly rude response, he flashed a quick grin.

"Merlin. Only the druids call me Emrys," he said helpfully, and the other man shrugged. Merlin went back to watching his feet, waiting out whatever cryptic message the druid had for him. Or perhaps he just wanted to know why Merlin was being so slow about getting Arthur to repeal the ban on magic. Either way, it was a conversation Merlin wasn't going to start.

"The knights… do they know you're magic?" the young man asked, and Merlin snorted, looking forward at Gwaine and Leon. He shrugged one shoulder- the good one, the one that wasn't sending a steady reminder of his abrupt trip downstairs from fingertips to shoulder blade.

"Sir Gwaine—the shorter one—he does. He figured it out. Sir Leon doesn't know. It's probably best it stay that way," he answered warningly, though really there was probably little need to worry about that.

"And does Sir Gwaine also know of the Lady of the Lake?" the druid asked, and Merlin nearly tripped over his own feet in shock. They knew? The druids knew about Freya? He looked around at the others and up towards Gwaine and Leon, worried they might have heard, or that the druids were angry and had split them all up to exercise some form of druidic justice without having to deal with two angry knights. But Leon was deep in conversation with an older druid, and Gwaine had stepped to the side to talk to the woman he'd been walking with. Neither of them looked like they were paying much attention to anything else, and Merlin sighed with relief before looking wordlessly at the druid walking next to him.

"Anyone with any skill at magic will have felt that spell you cast," the man said, which didn't help Merlin's state of mind. Did that mean Kilgarrah knew also? And Morgana? "…But we are perhaps better informed of the comings and goings of our forest than others," the young man added, and Merlin thought he detected the hint of a wicked grin at his very obvious momentary panic. It only made him frown. If the druid hadn't been so obnoxious about it, Merlin would have liked to ask, at the very least, if the druids might make sure Freya was alright, or if they knew where she could go and be safe. Even though there was no doubt in his mind that she could defend herself, he didn't like the idea of her being all by herself at the lake.

The druid seemed to read the conflict on Merlin's face, and his grin only grew wider.

"Sorry, the elders… they keep telling me I shouldn't do that to people. But it's fun, you know? I mean, you must know. Surely you do magic for fun, sometimes," the young man said, and Merlin scowled for only another second before he grinned somewhat hesitantly.

"Not often, but sometimes. Don't tell Gaius," he answered, and was quiet for several strides. "Is Freya safe, out here? I don't know where else she could go," he said, and received a sort of half-hearted shrug in return. Merlin fidgeted, tugging again at loose threads in the wrapping on his arm.

"She is safe. The lake protects its own, and she cannot leave its confines, so you needn't concern yourself with that," the druid finally answered, and Merlin stopped walking.

"She what?" he asked, hoping beyond hope he'd heard that wrong.

"She is safe?" the druid asked, turning and looking at him with some concern.

"No, about the lake. She _can_ leave the lake?" he asked hopefully, but the druid shook his head. Merlin could have cursed. He'd have liked to curse _and_throw something, but that would alert Gwaine and Leon both to something very wrong in his world, assuming they both heard him, and then they'd ask questions and he didn't have the wherewithall to throw things, curse, and come up with some outrageous lie to tell Leon all on top of the entire rest of his rotten day. So he just gaped at the druid like a landed fish.

"Em—er, Merlin?" the man asked.

"She can't leave?" he asked.

"Sorry, mate, I thought you knew," the druid answered, sounding remarkably like Gwaine there for a moment before casting a flustered glance at his elders as they passed both of them without a word. Realizing they were going to fall behind, Merlin shook himself and started walking again, albeit with his head down, fingers clenching and unclenching as he tried to work through this latest bit of news. The druid walked backwards in front of him for several steps before he held out a hand to stop him. Merlin looked up, about ready to push him out of the way and continue on to the castle with all haste no matter what questions it raised.

"There's probably a way around it. You found a way around that curse on her, right? Look—stop, you're going to turn that into ribbons." That last was directed at the anxious fingers that were currently back to fidgeting with the wrapping. Merlin stopped pulling on threads and shoved his hand furiously into his jacket pocket.

"I can fix that—you know, if it bothers you," the young man said, and Merlin wanted to shake him. Of course it bothered him! His arm was broken and his shoulder had been dislocated and then relocated, and he hadn't taken a thing for it because Arthur had tried to give him that wretched, foul smelling, acid-tasting stuff earlier and he'd been too distracted to get anything else!

Then again, if he went back with a healed arm, Arthur would ask all sorts of inconvenient questions. But the druid looked so distressed and apologetic that Merlin did feel somewhat bad for wanting to yell at him. So he huffed a sigh instead.

"No. I can't go back with a healed arm, not without everyone wondering why, and how," he answered, and the druid nodded. He also reached out and touched his fingers very gently to Merlin's arm anyway, and Merlin almost pulled away, but for the warmth that ran from his shoulder right down his arm, taking away the worst of the pain and leaving behind only a minor annoyance.

"What did you do?" Merlin asked accusingly, although perhaps not as accusingly as he would have liked.

"It won't help for more than a handful of hours, perhaps long enough to sleep. I really am sorry about your friend. I will speak to some of the others, and make sure she is watched over when we can," he said. Merlin flexed the fingers on his bad arm, marveling a little that it didn't hurt much at all. He looked up when the druid mentioned Freya, and thought for a moment. They'd almost reached the castle, and Merlin could see the others up ahead.

"Thank you," he said as the druid he'd been walking with stepped back and followed after his elders, and the young man raised his hand in a distracted wave as he turned and nearly tripped over a tree root. Merlin shook his head, still slightly confused as to the very un-druid-like behavior, but then… Freya didn't act much like a druid either. So maybe they weren't all stuffy, cryptic, riddle-speaking old men. Then he turned and went to join Leon, looking around for Gwaine as he joined the knight. Leon looked a little confused, or perhaps shell-shocked, something with which Merlin wholeheartedly sympathized.

"You too?" Merlin asked with one of those half-grins that wasn't so much amusement as sympathy. He looked around absently for Gwaine, but his friend was nowhere to be found. "Have you seen Gwaine?" he added, and Leon perked up and looked around as if expecting Gwaine to jump out from behind a bush and shout 'Surprise!' and then cackle with glee when both Leon and Merlin just about jumped out of their skins. But no one jumped out, and Leon frowned.

"He must be here somewhere, unless he went ahead. We could go on and see if we find him," he said, and Merlin followed as he continued on toward the castle, peering around into the dark forest.

When they were almost clear of the trees, there was a loud crashing that, predictably, caused Merlin to jump and Leon to both jump and half-draw his sword before Gwaine came tripping and stumbling out of the forest, looking quite disheveled and grinning a cavalier grin at his friends' reactions. Merlin thought, and remembered seeing Gwaine walking with one of the women of the group, and when Gwaine looked at him, he rolled his eyes and resumed trudging to the castle.

As they neared the gates, someone stepped forward from leaning on the wall to meet them. Leon paused for a split second and then stepped forward past both Merlin and Gwaine to say hello to Elaine and ask her in that very concerned tone of voice if she was alright, which only made her laugh. After turning to make sure that Gwaine and Merlin were both still following, they turned and walked into the castle.

"Think we've been ditched, mate," Gwaine said, clapping Merlin on the shoulder—the one that didn't hurt, luckily—before they followed Leon and Elaine back into the castle.


	27. Chapter 27

_**A/N**: Thanks to all who made it this far in "A Dish Best Served Cold!" There is a short epilogue following this (long) concluding chapter (in which some Things still happen! Soo...cliffhanger warning!), and then we'll get started right away posting our next story: "The Tapestry." Thanks again from my co-authors and I for reading the Friday Knights. Please drop us a line to let us know how we did!_

...

Arthur sighed, leaning on the table, facing away from his knights and servant as he collected himself. His eyes darted to Gwen, who nodded slightly, and then, straightening, he turned around to face them. A rag-tag bunch they looked, thoroughly worn-out and exhausted—almost comically so—and yet these three men were responsible for saving his life and many other lives in Camelot. He was not pleased to have been dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night, but he would have been less pleased to have woken up being roasted alive by…

"I still find the idea of homicidal garden ornamentation ridiculous," he said, exhaling, "but, it appears we owe you our lives nevertheless. You are to be commended."

"Oh, like I might get the day off tomorrow?" Merlin tried.

"Don't be stupid, Merlin," Arthur snapped. "What would you even do with a day off, anyway?" Merlin opened his mouth to answer, but Arthur ploughed on: "I should like a full debrief tomorrow. In the meantime, I want you all to go to bed, by way of the court physician. That is an order."

Merlin, Gwaine, and Sir Leon all bowed and made for the door. Gwen gave a small cough.

"One more thing," Arthur added, and they turned back: "Take the morning off." This last bit was said with a small grin, and they smiled back, appearing relieved.

Arthur turned back to his wife, who was already removing her dressing gown and crawling back into bed. "Was that good?" he asked.

"The perfect touch," she said, welcoming her king and husband back into bed. "They didn't look as though they would be much good for anything tomorrow. You might have given them the whole day off."

"I couldn't do that, they would only get into trouble. Well, Sir Leon wouldn't, but—"

The rest was lost in a kiss.

_Knock! Knock! Knock!_

Arthur was going to kill the next person who walked through his—

"Sorry to bother you, cous—oh!" Kilhwch said as he barged in, and then averted his eyes as Gwen pulled up the covers over her nightshift with a small squeak of modesty. "Oh! I'm sorry, I—I just saw the others leave, I thought you would still be—I'm so sorry, I can come back later…"

"No, no, it's all right, K," Arthur said exasperatedly, crawling out of his warm bed. "What is it?"

"I came to apologize!" Kilhwch said anxiously. "As soon as I'd heard about the gnomes, I came to explain—you must know I never conceived that my gift would threaten our very lives! You must believe me, Arthur, I—I feel just wretched!"

Arthur patted him on the back, guiding his well-meaning cousin back to the door. "It's quite all right, Sir K. Of course you didn't know. Thank you for coming to see me, now—go to sleep!"

Arthur felt no remorse for slamming the door on his cousin.

...

Later the next morning, Galehaut made a visit to the Queen. He waited somewhat nervously for Gwen to answer the door, and when she did so he bowed. "May I speak with you, your Highness?"

"Of course," she said after only a short pause, gallantly making room for him to enter though it was clear that he had completely surprised her. This, putting him on somewhat better footing, suited Galehaut just fine, and he entered the royal chambers with better spirits than he originally believed he would. Best to get it out quickly, then. "I have behaved in a contemptuous manner towards your Highness in the last few weeks," he said. "I was distracted from my first duty, which is to be a knight of Camelot and uphold the chivalrous ideals such a position requires." And here he knelt, and proffered a bouquet of flowers which were fastened with a gold bracelet—"Please allow me to renew my vows of loyalty to you, and offer my sincerest apologies for words spoken in passion, not malice."

He only raised his head when he felt Guinevere take the bouquet from his hand.

"How long have you been practicing that?" she asked. She was smiling.

"Oh, it just came to me, you know," Galehaut said, rising to his feet. "You forget that I am a man of court. Does not Arthur give you such poetry?"

She laughed. "When Arthur heard that cats leave dead mice in their owners' shoes as gifts, I sincerely feared that I would wake up with a dragon's head sitting on my slippers," she said. "But I appreciate it. Thank you."

Galehaut smiled, but it was forced. "I think I hoped rather than believed that you were a villain. I shall never forgive myself for how I treated you."

"Well, I forgive you, anyway," Gwen said, with characteristic open-hearted goodness. "…What made you change your mind about me, if you don't mind me asking?"

Galehaut knew that she would ask something like that, but he couldn't help but see the moment flash before his mind's eye: the moment when, earlier that morning, he accidentally interrupted a conversation between Lancelot and Guinevere in the courtyard. He had been picking the flowers he now offered to Guinevere for Lancelot, planned on giving him the bracelet to make him see that he cared more for Lancelot than anything in the world. That plan died when he saw the looks in their eyes. Gwen looked at Galehaut with a little concern and great compassion, and it was mild, temperate and welcoming of all, even him. Lancelot had a gaze of the most selfless, gentle love that Galehaut had ever seen—but it was not meant for him, and it faded as Lancelot looked at him.

He shrugged. "Oh, a glance is all that's needed, your Highness. He certainly picked a fine woman to love."

But the way he said the words alerted her to his thoughts. She slipped the bracelet off the flowers and offered it, but Galehaut backed away. "Keep it, please," he said.

"Do not give up hope so easily," she said, putting the bracelet into his hand despite his protests. "I know your conviction is stronger than that. Save it for the day when you can give it to him."

Galehaut, touched to the depths of his heart by her words, smiled with nostrils flaring and eyes glistening. He knew then that Lancelot would never love him, not when the woman that he loved was so kind. He wanted to cry, and he knew that he was a very huggable individual so he would probably get lots of cooing attention if he did. But he didn't particularly like doing what people expected him to do. He could change the game when it suited him, and this seemed like the perfect time to do so.

"You're too kind," Galehaut said, putting the bracelet in his pocket. "Your complexion does not suit gold anyway, I think."

Gwen still looked concerned. "Galehaut—you can count me as your ally, you know. I am—going to help you in any way I can."

"Your Highness, you become more charitable by the second," Galehaut said, beaming but not admitting a thing. He added with impish delight, "Might I beg an embrace from my new ally?"

Guinevere turned out to be very good at giving hugs, and Galehaut was almost able to forget his heartbreak as he skipped off down the hall.

That afternoon, Gwen looked down from her bedchamber window and noticed that Galehaut and Lancelot were having lunch together. She had no idea how Galehaut managed to pull that off so quickly, but Galehaut seemed to be a man of many talents. She watched them with a smile. _And who knows?..._she thought to herself, and went down to have lunch with Arthur.

...

On his morning off, Merlin got up early, before the sun, and went to the stable. He saddled Diablo, muttering softly to the sleepy horse, and clattered off through the gates just as the sun was rising. After last night, he'd have really preferred to stay far away from the forest for several days, but there was the matter of a certain someone being stuck in her lake. Merlin wasn't sure what he was planning on saying, but he knew he had to speak to her, so he sent Diablo through the trees along a familiar route to the lake.

When he reached it, he at first saw no one. It was enough to make him panic, briefly, as he half-swung, half-tumbled off of Diablo and almost ended sitting on the ground. After he'd caught his balance, he stepped away from the black horse and gave the lake another quick glance.

"Freya?" he called hesitantly, stepping toward the water.

"Right here, Merlin, stop worrying," Freya said, and he whirled to the right to see her sitting, half-hidden by the old mooring post, knees drawn to her chest and her feet just touching the water. She was skipping stones across the water at her feet, the arcs of every skip shining brief, bright colors before the stones plunked back into the lake. As Merlin joined her, she glanced up at him and flicked another rock across the water, grinning as it skipped five times before disappearing. Merlin sat down next to her, cross-legged to keep his boots from getting wet for the second week in a row. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, fiddling with the sling on his arm. After several more stone-skips, Freya reached over and put her hand over his to stop him pulling on the tail-end of a thread. He sighed unhappily and turned his hand over to interlace their fingers.

"What did you do to your arm?" Freya asked, and Merlin shrugged one shoulder.

"I fell down some stairs and broke it," he answered, glancing over to see Freya watching him with some concern.

"What's wrong, Merlin?" she asked when he looked back down without saying anything.

"We—Leon, Gwaine, and I- were in the forest last night, and we ran into some druids," Merlin said, "And one of them told me you can't leave the lake." Freya looked away and across the water, but seemed entirely unsurprised.

"You knew?" he asked, and she nodded.

"The first thing I tried to do was leave. I wasn't sure if you'd done that spell or if it was Morgana, and if it was Morgana, I didn't want to stay here for her to find me," she said, and then wrinkled her nose. "It felt like I was trying to walk through a grater," she added, and Merlin looked over at her, closing his fingers around her hand in sympathy. That certainly sounded unpleasant.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, and she grinned crookedly.

"I thought I could figure it out myself, and then you wouldn't have to worry about it," she said, turning back from watching the water. Merlin realized after a minute that he was gazing off thoughtfully just over her shoulder, and that the slightly abashed look on her face had been replaced by a soft smile.

"Sorry," he said, and looked thoughtfully at Freya's feet where they still touched the water.

"If I only go a few feet, it doesn't hurt so bad. But it's easier to just stay in contact with the lake. I don't think it wants to let me go," she said, reaching her free hand out to touch the wavelets that lapped at her toes.

"We'll figure it out," he said, meeting Freya's glance very earnestly.

"What if…" she started, and he shook his head, gesturing without thinking and then flashing a quick smile as he and Freya both glanced at their still-clasped hands.

"No. We'll figure it out. There must be a spell to convince the lake to let you go. It'll be fine," he said, and Freya laughed, holding her hand up placatingly.

"Okay, okay. I believe you," she said, and they both went quiet.

"How did you get time to come out here?" Freya finally asked.

"Arthur gave me the morning off. Leon and Gwaine, too," he answered smugly.

"The king gave you the morning off?"

"Yes he did."

"Did you save the entire kingdom or something?"

"No, just the castle. Well, mostly the nobles in the castle."

Freya was quiet, one of those do-I-even-want-to-ask looks on her face, and then she shrugged.

"What was it this time?"

"Gnomes. Little clay gnomes, with red hats. And rakes, some of them."

"If you'll tell me about it without making me ask a hundred questions, I'll teach you how to skip stones," Freya said blandly, and Merlin looked over at her.

"What if I already know how to skip stones?" he asked, letting her hand go to pick up a pretty round stone.

"You don't."

"I might know…"

"You can't skip a round stone, Merlin," Freya said patiently, holding up a perfectly flat one she'd picked up. She held it out to him and then closed her hand around it as he reached for it. She gave him a look, and he held out for all of thirty seconds before relenting.

"I'll tell you about the gnomes if you teach me to skip a stone _and _how to do those color arcs you had it doing earlier," he said. She rolled her eyes, then leaned forward and kissed him quickly before sitting back. He blinked at her in surprise and then grinned.

"Alright, start talking," she said, and started picking more skipping stones from the rocks on which they sat.

**...**

Well, there was no time like the present. Leon had the morning off, and Elaine was going to be leaving the castle any day now-Lord Bernard seemed impatient and Leon saw servants coming and going from their chambers with trunks and chests of all kinds. He couldn't wait any longer to make his (quite possibly final) move.

Thankfully, Leon didn't have to wait long outside of the Ascolat's rooms. He was shown in, and saw Elaine sitting by the window, doing some final stitching on a tapestry.

"My lady," he said with a bow.

She smiled. "When are you going to start calling me 'Elaine'?"

Leon tightened his lips and mumbled, "I don't know." _Well, that was a stupid thing to say_. He dragged his eyes upward, not allowing himself to look away like a coward. "I came to speak to Lord Bernard, if I may."

"He's just packing up the last of his cloaks—he'll be out in a minute. Won't you sit down?"

There was no where else to sit besides the couch, and he sat next to her while trying to not invade her personal space although the couch was rather a small one.

"Have you…started packing yet?" he said.

She didn't look up, but just kept on stitching. "No, not yet."

"Oh." That was odd. But he admired a woman that didn't spend all her time fussing over dresses. She looked beautiful, though, sitting there stitching in the sunlight. He suddenly thought about what it would be like to wake up to _that _every morning—and to be able to talk about crossbows over breakfast, too…!

He tried to act more business-like, which was difficult considering the devouring nature of the couch that seemed determined to press him and Elaine together. But she didn't look anxious at all.

The door to the bedchamber opened and Lord Bernard entered, a few cloaks bunched up in his hands. Leon emerged from the couch with difficulty. "Yes, Sir—Lionel, isn't it?" Bernard asked.

"Leon, my lord," Leon said, giving a bow. He was starting to wonder if the man got everyone's names wrong on purpose.

"Yes, yes, what is it, lad? Packing cloaks is a risky business and I don't need to be disturbed!"

"Yes, of course," Leon said, pretending that Lord Bernard's statement made perfect sense. "Only I had a request to make before you leave."

"Well, what is it? Spit it out!" He suddenly wheeled around toward the bedchamber and shouted, "And what are you doing?"

Leon was surprised to see Merlin poke his head around the door to the bedchamber. He must have come back to work a bit earlier than Leon. "I was just going to say—" Merlin started before Bernard cut him off.

"Hurry, Martin, get back on that trunk! We've got to compress all the air out of those cloaks or the clasps won't be able to take the strain!"

Merlin gave Leon an odd sort of look but did as he was told and scampered back off into the room as Lord Bernard turned back to Leon. "Well?"

"Yes." Leon cleared his throat, having practiced this bit several times in his head beforehand. "Lady Elaine's talents as a weaver have not gone unnoticed. Camelot prizes excellence and talent from all corners of his lands, and so on behalf of the kingdom I request that you consider allowing Lady Elaine stay on here at the castle through the winter. The King would be willing to reward her handsomely for producing other tapestries to decorate the Great Hall with. She would of course be able to have her choice of rooms to stay in, and—"

Lord Bernard cut him off with an energetic wave of his hands. "Oh, for God's sake, Sir Lionhart, have you been living in a cave? Elaine already agreed with King Arthur that she would be staying on _yesterday_!"

Leon froze, and blinked in silence for a second. "Oh."

"Honestly, Camelot needs more messengers to let people know about these things, instead of sending man after man to badger me about something that's already been decided!" Lord Bernard continued. "I mean! First it was the Queen, then the King—then that servant Marvin—then that other long-haired drunkard that calls himself a knight—I doubt I could have taken Elaine away if I wanted to!"

Leon felt himself turning red as Elaine started laughing uncontrollably into the tapestry. "Er—yes, my lord. I apologize—"

"Why ask me, anyway?" Bernard went on, now almost looking like he was enjoying himself, "Elaine is a grown woman and can do what she likes! Far be it from me to decide where my daughter likes to spend her time! If she wants to stay, who am I to say she can't? I'm just her _father_, after all! All I have left to say on that matter is that she better find herself a lord to marry or so help me I'll send her back to Ascolat for horseback riding lessons, don't think I won't!"

Leon gulped, not quite sure what to make of Lord Bernard's speech, but Elaine looked about ready to pass out from laughter, and Lord Bernard relented. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to get back to packing before the five kingdoms arrive and ask me to let her stay too!"

Leon nodded dumbly but Lord Bernard had already stormed off, shutting the door with a bang behind him.

There was a moment of silence, broken only by Elaine's uncontrollable giggling.

"You might have told me," he said, almost petulant.

"And miss the chance to see your famous pluck in action? Not on your life!" she said with a final laugh. Her eyes turned on him, and the mirth in her gaze faded into something else. "But now that that's done with, I suppose we'd better be moving things along, then."

_Oh no, not 'things'!_ "Things?" he asked, feigning confusion. "What things?" _Oh God, if she asks me to court her, Gwaine will never let me live it down. Oh, but how perfect that would be if she did! But she won't. I'm familiar with the psychological pattern_. Still, he felt the urge to back away as she stood and came toward him. She stopped well within his personal space, and stood in front of him with her arms straight at her sides.

"Sir Leon, do you like me?"

_What?_ "Y-yes, of course!" Leon said. What, she had to ask? Was he that in control? He certainly didn't feel like he was in control…

"Then why don't you just say it? I don't make a very good beast of chase." She sighed. "If you like me, then let's take that for a mutual agreement and give courting a try. What do you say?"

She put out her hand, making Leon bridle until he realized she was holding her hand out for him to shake, as if this was a business transaction. Strangely enough, Leon was alright with that. Simple and straightforward, that's what he liked. He licked his bottom lip, then reached out and took her hand with a laugh of relief.

She smiled too, and said, "Good." But her expression said, _I'm going to give you ten seconds to kiss me._

Leon promptly kissed her hand. Elaine's eyes became a bit more demanding—that was obviously not what she meant.

_On the lips, then. Yes. Alright. Can't be too hard. From a tactical standpoint you have the high ground. The very high ground. Simple trajectory towards a stationary object._

His voice of reason decided to speak up. _How the hell are you going to get all the way down there?_

_Should I kneel? Maybe I can sort of, um, crouch? Maybe once I get started I can sort of adjust. Yes. I think I've got it._

He took her hands in his and held them gently. "Then we are agreed."

_Go, go, go!_

He closed his eyes and bent down. It seemed like forever as, vertebra by vertebra, his spine drew downwards. His sense of time was so thrown off that when his nose and lips did touch flesh he opened his eyes in surprise, and stared at her earring. He had kissed the corner of her mouth.

_You missed! You bloody idiot, how could you mimhmm—! Mmmm…._

Leon stopped paying attention to the inner voice as Elaine turned and closed her lips around his, caressing his mouth as her hands strayed upwards and gently stroked the insides of his wrists. The sensation of their movement made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

There was a nagging throb at the top of his back, protesting at the angle which he was subjecting it to. He reluctantly pulled away and straightened.

Elaine just wrinkled her brow. "I think I might need to invest in a step-ladder."

...

Gwaine hadn't, incidentally, gone to see Gaius after their midnight debriefing with King Arthur. The long string of late nights, bad dreams, and early mornings were finally catching up with him, so he was actually _tired _after having dealt with the gnomes, and had, for once, gone straight to bed. He'd slept well enough, actually, inasmuch as he had no weird dreams about the witch Morgana. He wasn't sure he dreamt of anything, unless it was of the warmth of that lovely druid woman's arms. And since Arthur had given them the morning off, he bloody well slept through it, and _enjoyed _it. When he woke, he was sick of lying in bed, and famished, so he headed to the kitchens, by way of Lord Bernard's quarters to talk him into keeping the Lady Elaine on for a bit. He managed to waste a good deal of time going to the armorer to get his chain mail repaired from the duel, filching more food and drink from the kitchens, and tracking down a wash and a change of clothes. The day was going quite well, in fact, and he was just ready to properly face it, so he headed to the training ground where the others would surely be gearing up, determined to be early for once.

At least, that was his plan.

Just as he arrived on the field, waving animatedly at Percival (Leon was not there yet, and was probably spending his morning off dutifully doing paperwork somewhere), he was waylaid by a certain aged physician, whom he attempted to pass by with a nod and a wide grin—

"Good morrow, Gaius," Gwaine said pleasantly—but Gaius was craftier than that.

Gaius raised one eyebrow at him, coming to a full stop. "It is well past morning, Sir Gwaine. I should say, 'Good afternoon'."

"Oh, is it?" Gwaine tried, still doggedly smiling, and trying to continue on his way to the practice field, but Gaius spoke again, interposing himself:

"You never came to see me yesterday after your duel."

"Oh. Didn't I?"

"I rather expected you would. Or after the incident with the gnomes, wherein, I gather, you helped Merlin and Sir Leon save the castle. _They _came to see me," Gaius said pointedly. Now Elyan, Lancelot, Galehaut, and the King had gathered to watch this exchange play out, and began to point and giggle among themselves.

"Did they?"

"They did." It was clear that the physician did not suffer fools, and parroting was getting him nowhere. Gaius' good eye bored holes into Gwaine.

Gwaine stared right back. But he caved pretty quickly, especially since Arthur looked as though he was about to intervene on Gaius' behalf, and Gwaine wanted to maintain what little dignity he had left. His shoulders slumped. "And I suppose you'd like me to come to see you, too?"

"What a wonderful idea, Sir Gwaine," Gaius smiled. "You know, you aren't nearly as thick-headed as the others say you are," he said, hobbling past him as Gwaine tried to work out whether that was a compliment or an insult, and finally deciding that that was Gaius' attempt at a joke. As the knights burst out laughing, he sent a rude gesture their way and turned on his heel to follow Gaius. "You could come along right now, in fact. I just completed my last errand and I'm free for a few hours. I am sure the King can spare you for a quick check-up? Just to make sure that nothing got knocked loose during that bout with Sir Galehaut. _Or_ the one with Sir Lancelot. _Or_ the fight with the gnomes. _And _to check on that hand of yours again." With that, Gaius was on his way.

Gwaine followed along behind him, like a chastened child.

They had barely gone inside when Gaius began to bark orders at him: "All right, strip: shirt, shoes, belt, off. And get up onto that table."

Gwaine couldn't even really manage a cheeky reply, but set to work. The hiss he made as his hand cramped—again—while he wrestled with his boot was unfortunately timed, and did not escape the physician's notice.

"Hand?"

Gwaine frowned. "It doesn't hurt _much _anymore," he tried. "It's had a few months to heal, after all."

"_No_, Sir Gwaine," Gaius corrected, "it hasn't had _any _time to heal, because you refuse to _allow _it heal." His tone was stern enough to cow Gwaine, who didn't meet his gaze. "Now sit down. You were in the ring with Galehaut a long time, and Lancelot _did _defeat you. You can save me time and yourself embarrassment if you can tell me if you are injured anywhere else..."

An hour later, Gwaine's whole body felt sticky with various healing salves, and bandages covered far too much of him. Three of his fingers were in tiny splints, keeping them straight together, and his knee was braced, and his lower ribs were wrapped tightly. Apparently, the combined forces of Hauttie and Lottie had worked him over harder than he thought (or, perhaps, more than he wanted to admit). He was dotted in strips of bandages that sealed smaller cuts and wounds. But the crowning misfortune of all of this physicking, and the primary reason that for all Gwaine respected Gaius he _hated _being under his care (hated all physicians, really, it was nothing personal), was that his hand was joined to the wrappings around his ribs and was pinned firmly against his chest.

"Is this _really _necessary?" he whined, tugging at his arm experimentally, and finding it didn't give except to discomfit his aching ribs.

"Sir Gwaine, you have three broken fingers, a torn tendon, a metacarpal that is fractured in at least two places, and less than two months ago you had a hole through your hand, which ought to have healed over by now but has not. Since it is clear your recovery time is dictated by your chosen lifestyle, you are unable to allow such a wound to heal, and even insist on compounding more injuries upon it. Therefore, as court physician, I must insist on drastic measures. I think you'll find my orders cannot be gainsaid."

"How looooong do I have to wear this?" Gwaine sulked as if he hadn't heard the lecture, drawing out his whine ever more desperately.

"Until it is fully healed, or at least given a fair head-start. A fortnight ought to be enough—"

"Two weeks!" Gwaine shrieked, and began to struggle in earnest with the bindings, trying to pick at the knots, but they were under his elbow and out of reach, probably by design. "No way, not happening. I can't be a one-armed knight for two weeks! I won't—"

"You're right: three weeks may be more in order," Gaius snapped, "unless you wish to be a one-armed knight for the rest of your life!" Gwaine had apparently saturated Gaius' limit for patience, and, cowed, he settled down a bit, though he glowered darkly.

It was that moment that Merlin walked in. He looked pensive, but was immediately stirred from his thoughts by the sight of Gwaine and Gaius in the room. "Hullo!" he said, grinning.

Gwaine grunted in reply.

"You actually got him to sit _still_?" he asked Gaius, and looked at Gwaine in mock bewilderment.

"Very funny," Gwaine grumbled, swatting at him.

"Hey, look at that!" Merlin cried, pointing out how Gwaine's hand was pinned to his chest, and motioned to his own arm, similarly immobilized, but in a suspiciously minimalist sling that Gwaine reckoned he could easily escape from if he wanted to. "Now we can be gimpy together," he said, with sarcastic cheer.

Gwaine groaned. "You're mad," he said. "Help me get dressed. I feel stupid covered in bandages like this." Laughing, probably at Gwaine's uncharacteristic modesty, Merlin obliged him, and between their two left hands they got Gwaine's clothes more or less back on in the right order. His boots and belt were managed with only a few mishaps, but while they strung one arm through his shirt, the rest of it bunched up around his neck, leaving his wounded arm's predicament bare for all to see.

"Well, I've missed training now," Gwaine grumbled, shooting a glare at Gaius as if this was his fault, and standing up.

Merlin laughed as if this was the funniest thing in the world. "There's still time to go to the tavern," he suggested, probably trying to make Gwaine feel better, as they stepped outside. "I thought you were getting quite good at the one-armed percussion."

"Merlin," Gwaine laughed, "I swear, if you don't shut up, I'll break your other…ah...arm…"

Gwaine trailed off, and stopped in his tracks, as something caught his eye across the courtyard. He took hold of Merlin's shirt, and Merlin, catching the strange look in his eye, looked around as if for danger. "Gwaine, what is it? What—"

And then he saw them, too:

Sir Leon was there.

And next to him walked two ghosts.

...

These "ghosts" had arrived in Camelot not long ago at all. Leon was putting away the last of the swords after training, with nothing more on his mind than what he was going to tell the knights about his relationship status tonight, when one of the day watch guards appeared in front of him.

"Excuse me, Sir—but the, er, children are here to see you."

Leon wrinkled his brow. "What children?"

"They said you were expecting them, sir," the guard said, looking about as confused as Leon felt. But he pointed, and Leon turned to observe a boy and a girl standing together. The girl was maybe in her early teens, with auburn hair pulled back and a bag over her shoulder. The boy, not much taller than the girl but certainly at least a few years older, had brown hair and he had a short sword strapped to his side. Both were dressed in worn but well-made travelling clothes, and were looking at him with half-expectation and half-uncertainty.

Leon's mind raced. Why should two children want to talk to him—as if he expected them? They looked familiar in an odd sort of way….

Leon started visibly when he realized who they were-Gwaine's long-lost family members, who he had written a letter to...well, it seemed like so long ago. He walked quickly over to them.

"My name is Sir Leon," he said.

The boy nodded vigorously but still looked too guarded to say anything, and the girl spoke up. "I'm Gwarae, he's Gareth," she said, and gave her brother a friendly punch on the arm that made him glare at her but at least brought him out of his shell. Aside from the different hair color she looked remarkably like Gwaine.

"Delighted to meet you, Gwarae," Leon said, bending down to take her hand.

Gwarae tried not to smile, and she give him a long suggestive glance up and down. Leon knew that look—he saw it on Gwaine's face plenty of times. And seeing that look in the face of a pre-teen girl who already looked quite a bit like Gwaine, oh, that was wrong on so many levels…

He quickly turned and shook Gareth's hand, hoping to stay on subject. "You're Gwaine's siblings?"

"That's right!" Gwarae said, still the voice of this operation. "Where's Gwaine?"

"Oh, he's—around," Leon said, quickly looking around. Gwaine had missed training, but what else was new? "I'm sure we can track him down. Did you just arrive in town?"

Gwarae nodded. "Sorry we're a day late—my horse threw a shoe somewhere around Ealdor, and the bloke in the village wouldn't make a new one without—"

"I'm sorry—'late'?"

"You never got our letter?" Gareth finally spoke up. His voice, if not his features, were reminiscent of Gwaine's, but it was odd to hear concern in Gwaine's voice.

Again Gwarae whacked her brother on the arm. "I told you we should have taken it into town!" She shrugged and flashed a smile at Leon. "He's an idiot sometimes, I did tell him to take it into town…"

"And I told you it wouldn't make any difference," Gareth snapped at her.

"It's alright," Leon said quickly. He never interacted much with his siblings and found their easy bickering somewhat uncomfortable. "I just wasn't expecting you so soon." He looked down at them—they looked so young, and yet it appeared that they had travelled all the way to Camelot entirely by themselves. You could only see their maturity in their eyes. Leon felt himself already feeling protective of them, like he felt with Merlin.

"Please allow me to find accommodations for you," he continued, gesturing towards the castle. "I'm sure we can find a couple of rooms near Gwaine's quarters."

"A _couple_of rooms? In Camelot?" Gwarae asked, her face the picture of amazement.

Leon nodded. "Your brother is a knight of the Round Table," he said, taking the opportunity to brag about Gwaine (although Gwaine definitely did not deserve it). "You can rest from your travels, and I'll track down—"

Leon turned when he realized that Gwarae and Gareth had stopped following him into the castle. They were staring across the courtyard, and Leon looked up to see none other than Gwaine himself standing transfixed on the other side. Leon's eyes lit up. This was going to be great—he might even get to see Gwaine cry…

Again…

...

Gwaine had heard that there were stages of grief.

Gwaine wasn't exactly sure _what _emotion he was dealing with when his little brother and sister appeared before him out of the distant past, but whatever it was, it came in stages:

1. **Denial**: _No, this can't be them. They must have died. I looked for them, and couldn't find them. They're dead. This is an evil plot of Morgana's. Or I'm overreacting. They maybe just __**look **__like Gareth and Gwarae. It's been-dear God-has it been ten years? Of course they look different, it's been ten bloody years. I'd know them anywhere. Jesus, Gwarae looks like mother._

2. **Anger**: _Why couldn't I find them? I must not have looked hard enough. Maybe they didn't want to be found. Maybe they hate me. Maybe someone did something to them, kept them from me? Leon. This must be Leon's fault. Who gave him the right to go behind my back looking for my family like that, only to spring them on me like this, unannounced? Why didn't he warn me? What a dick._

3. **Bargaining**: _Why do they have to see me like this? If only my arm wasn't strapped to my chest, so I could hug them properly. Dear God in Heaven, don't let them hate me, don't let them blame me like I deserve. I'll do anything. I'll give up drinking._

4. **Depression**: _If I'm so happy, what the hell am I crying for? This is either a dream come true, or a nightmare. I could die happy now. I want the earth to swallow me up. I regretted nothing more than losing them, and now they are back! I've never been so happy, not since Gwarae was born, not since Gareth learned to say my name. I don't deserve this._

5. **Acceptance**: _They're here, oh God, they are really here! __They are real and they are here!_

This last stage happened when Gwaine realized that these emotional stages flashed through him not in a single instant as he thought, but over the course of many minutes, during which his body had responded quite on its own. He had run at them, and they had charged him, and they screamed and yelled his name as he called out to them until they collapsed in a heap in the grass, embracing and rolling around on the earth hugging and crying and kissing and shouting.

When Gwaine came back to himself, he was buried in their tiny (though not so tiny as he remembered) arms and he had managed to capture both little siblings in one arm, and his face hurt from smiling, and Gwarae was crying uncontrollably and Gareth was trying not to do the same. Leon and Merlin were standing around them, grinning ear to ear.

"Why didn't you fucking _tell _me?" Gwaine demanded of Leon, but didn't wait for an answer, instead held his younger siblings out at arms' length and drank them in like water in the desert. "Here, let me look at you. My God, how you've grown! You look well, where have you been all this time? I looked for you—you have to know that I—"

But at that, Gareth's eyes darkened and he grew serious—

"Why did you leave us, Gwaine?"


	28. Epilogue

**MEANWHILE, AT TINTAGEL...**

"Well...it didn't go as well as planned. I thought you said they were all stupid in Camelot?"

"I said nothing of the kind," Morgana snapped, propping herself up on one elbow in bed. She rolled over and, half sexually-charged and half full of barely-contained-homicidal-rage, gripped the knight sharing her bed by the throat. "If you would listen occasionally, you would know that I in fact said the exact opposite. Sir Leon, Guinevere, and even that dratted servant Merlin can all be quite intelligent, or at least lucky. I told you to watch out for them," she snarled, and let him go.

"_Arthur's _an idiot, though. The gnomes almost worked. I hardly had to lift a finger—I could have just sat there and watched while he destroyed himself." The knight grinned widely, propping his hands beneath his head and looking far too pleased with himself.

"_Arthur _leads some kind of charmed life," Morgana growled, shoving blankets off herself and standing up. _O-ho_, the knight thought to himself with no little glee as he leered at her naked form, _So she **doesn't** know about the whole Merlin's-a-warlock thing, then? Best keep that lovely little gem to ourselves, then!_" If it was so easy to kill the idiot I would have done it long ago," she went on. "He may be smarter than he looks, though I doubt it. Or he at least knows how to keep intelligent people close by him. At any rate, you're not doing me any good failing in the tasks I give you and running back here with your tail between your legs!" she cried, wheeling back on him again.

He had the decency to look cowed, and sat up in bed. "Of course, my lady. I will not fail you again."

"We'll see," Morgana replied, sounding unconvinced. "Anyway, I want you to meet someone." Morgana turned and called over her shoulder: "Floree!"

"Hel_lo_," the knight said, leaping to his feet and scrambling into his trousers, as a blonde-haired serving girl waltzed into the room, bringing Morgana a rich fur robe.

"This is Floree," Morgana said, pulling the robe around her. "I would like you to introduce her to the court as a handmaiden for the Lady Elaine."

The knight cocked his head at the pretty little thing, trying to figure out how she worked, as if she was, possibly, rigged to explode. "And what's your secret, my dear?" he asked her, condescendingly. "When do you blow up in the King's face?"

Floree only smiled shyly at him and dipped into a routine curtsy. There was something faintly amiss about the smile, though: like a cat's smile, ostensibly cute and friendly, though it hid a predator.

Morgana, who stood behind her, wore a matching smirk.

"Now, get dressed and get out. You better be back in Camelot before nightfall. We wouldn't want anyone to suspect where you've been," Morgana said dismissively.

The knight bowed extravagantly, and took the serving girl's hand as if she were a high-born lady to lead her to where his steed—fitted with the magical bridle that made the two-day trip between Camelot and Tintagel into the matter of a few hours—waited.

"Kilhwch," Morgana hissed, making the knight turn around at the far end of the hall. "If you fail me again, don't bother coming back."

**...**

THE END

of

A DISH BEST SERVED COLD

...

_**A/N:** A warm thank-you to all who read! We hope you will follow the continuing adventures of **The Friday Knights** in the next installment: **"The Tapestry." **Since this is a co-written work, the next episode will be posted to **B.A. Murdock**'s account (she can be found in my Favorite Authors tab and I will also Favorite the work itself once she begins posting it). Please let us know what you thought, what you liked or didn't like, and any suggestions for improvement or requests you can offer on any point will be appreciated. If you like what you read and want to know about the "visual" side of Friday Knights (the "actors" we chose to "play" the various NPCs, including Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Felton), we have a **tumblr** blog called, you guessed it, **TheFridayKnights,** so please check us out!. Thank you from May Glenn, B.A., and Caitydid! :D_


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